Plant Teachers

Many who have gotten anywhere in their study and understanding of Tai Chi have done so with the aid of Plant Teachers. Of those who did not have the perspective of plant teachers some just didn’t swing that way or it really would not have been a good idea but others were simply not up to it. As a side bar I might mention that Bill W, the founder of AA was a fan of LSD psychotherapy for addiction treatment and had dropped a dose while examining the full weight of his moral inventory more than once. His Brothers convinced him to discontinue that research as it might reflect badly upon AA as a group.

Of course Sativa is the most gracious Plant Teacher. There is a highly Somatic awareness that comes with being high that lets the student wander around inside the body feeling the machine like qualities of body mechanics as well as the energy of tension and release. Visualizations can be more transporting as well. The feeling of how good Tai Chi feels to the body can be magnified by the experience because the effect is primarily sensory. Of course there is a mental and psychological component to being stoned also. One of those components is a dramatic shift in the way the mind body stores and retrieves information. I remember Grinspoon saying in his book that he studied all his material in Med school both straight and stoned so he knew it on a much deeper level. After learning new forms and exercises when you get high you have to go through the whole thing relearning and reprogramming it. Beware though, I think that this should not comprise too much of your practice. Most of us know those who have a stoney form, lose their balance or forget where they are in the Slow Set due to an over-reliance on this Plant Teacher but I will tell you that many of the people that I respect the most and have the most beautiful and technically excellent forms have entered through this door.

Another Plant Teacher of course is Alcohol. A lot of folks don’t remember that of course John Barleycorn is one of the Plant Teachers that goes way back to Ancient times. Many times when practicing forms, drills and exercises it is possible to get to a level of abandon when a little drunk. Some of the biggest breakthroughs that I have ever made in Push Hands were made after having a few drinks with friends and letting the level of play get much looser and more unpredictable than what I had been able to do before. Of course it took me more than a year to own those techniques that I had discovered while tipsy in the clear mind state. This is an important point. Any insight gained with the aid of Plant Teachers must be able to be demonstrated in the Sober State.

The most venerable of Plant Teachers are the Entheogens or Psychedelics. I will tell you that many of the finest minds of my generation devoted themselves to the serious study of these Plant Allies. You can see the wisdom brought back in the writings of Schultes, Terrence McKenna, Dale Pendell, Rick Strassman, DM Turner, Jonathan Ott, Sasha Shulgin, Harner, Stolaroff, Weil et al who are among the most brilliant and insightful thinkers, writers and explorers of Inner Space. DMT, Ayahuasca, Pscilocybin, Peyote and LSD are substances that continue a heritage of Sacraments that since prehistoric times have been used ritually to access this Dimension of human perception. I will attest to the fact that there is a special gift germane to the Tai Chi experience offered by the Plant Teachers.

I certainly do not encourage this kind of thing. No seriously. Life is very serious now and I guess at this point in my life I’m not up to it. There is a birthright contained in the Psychedelic experience that perhaps is best saved for those coming of age. The weight of real responsibility has not been conferred upon them yet so they may walk more safely in that Garden of the Plant Teachers.