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.

Emergent Properties

I have always had a hard time communicating the energetics of Martial training to many of my friends who are Energy Workers and Earth Mysteries Students and I came up with this; perhaps it will be useful to you.

In the course of learning to read people's "intentions" in a Martial scenario we practice with our peers who are studying this same body of knowledge. When practicing with a generous and helpful partner one lets down their barriers and can blend and harmonize with the incoming energy and return the volley. As the ability to have more extended exchanges emerges one finds that this is an intimate conversation not an argument. There can be some of the most meaningful dialogues that we can have in which we find ourselves, discover and reveal truths and find how much of real importance we have to share with others. Before we can have this conversation we have to develop a common vocabulary in a symbolic language that uses the Mind Body interface not the syntax of transformational grammar. Very Metaphysical indeed to understand and communicate with this Archetypal library of symbols that which is ineffable in words. It is both healing and transformational.

Punching and kicking indeed!

Another of the Emergent Properties we encounter on this Path is that while one is learning Martial Arts or coming up in a given school or system there is the emergence of a group dynamic. As the relationships develop within this group it becomes evident that this is important not only to the process of learning the Art but also to our evolution as human beings. In New Age parlance this is a Soul Group, a group brought together beyond Space and Time to share evolutionary and Karmic exchanges.

Back to Punching and kicking; are we developing real Martial abilities? – If you mean by that a complex combination of skills and knowledge then we are of course zeroing in on it. If you mean by that the ability to fight effectively we are still miles away from being able to effortlessly control an attacker at full strength and speed at combat realities by this method. That is why we work both ends toward the middle and at the other end of the spectrum we study moves and techniques. But beware! Scuffling obscures energy work so if you really want to get the energy part then you have to dare to suck. Let down your defenses, let the other guy get you, make you flinch, hit you, throw you and for now you just take the ride. That is how you will learn. You can of course not look so bad if you use force, intercept the attacks, force your techniques and try to win but… it is highly unlikely that you will enter the Promised Land by that method so invest in loss. Desire to become one with the incoming energy, to accept it, receive it, welcome it and not “block it out”.

Sometimes I feel that this state we enter is more akin to Shamanism than Martial Arts. The components of Shamanism are:

1) The creation of Altered Space
2) The ability to bring others into that space
3) The ability to perceive, work with and transmute Energy in that space
4) The ability to bring back Knowledge or Skills from that space

There are many mind techniques like NLP, Hypnosis, Lenair and the like that are tools to explore the Semiotics of human communication and the dynamics of behavior. Perhaps by Hypnosis or Mutual Hypnosis one can be aided in entering the expanded state necessary to do this work. Perhaps we should employ Sacramental Plant substances. The practice of Shamanism that does not involve movement brings us closer to our goal but does not bridge the gap of being able to translate this ability into Psycho-Neural flow of movement and control. We are still left with the Mind Body Bridge and how to enter the Flow to have effortless control of ourselves and others. We will have to invent and discover some exercises to begin bridging this gap. In the meantime we have our Daily Practice, our Group and this Altered Space which seems to be the very source of these Emergent Properties.

Bio-aesthetics

I have found a completely different area of the mountain that has nothing to do with Martial Arts as I had understood that term. Actually, I found more Fine Arts in Tai Chi than I had imagined. Perhaps this is just Bio-Aesthetics, the way that high level behavior that is potentially beneficial to the organism is perceived as pleasing or beautiful because there is a biological imperative to it. Maybe…

The deep Artistic Engagement with Tai Chi is a varied and personal thing. I remember having endless conversations with one friend over what is art and what is not. I’m not going there I promise you but I am thinking about what characteristics might transform movement into this danse macabre. Oh oh, I feel a list coming on.

• Listening, performing and composing with movement
• Showing aesthetic resonance through energy and facial expressions
• Being intensely absorbed for extended periods of time
• Revealing a quality of concentration not apparent elsewhere
• Beginning to discover, explore, give expression to and communicate the inner world
• Making significant physical responses - movements and gestures which hitherto have not been seen, or have not previously been made independently
• Listening to the effects of moving or standing still
• Exploring a hypothesis - If I move this way I feel unbalance so if this then…??
• Specific spatial concepts such as high, low, fast, slow, variation; the concepts of linkage – thought with movement, feeling with quality of movement
• Which part of my body will I move? Where will I move? How will I move?
• Self reflection - How did I feel about what I just invented? What could I have done differently? What did it remind me of? Why do I suck so bad?
• Memory skills - Can I remember what I discovered last time? Do I want to use it again?
• Where am I in the Slow Set??
• Spatial orientation – Where am I?

Maybe Artistic expression is always related to Bio-Aesthetics. We always talk about Naturalness. It is an ideal to have Natural Movement and when you see it you understand that the efficiency, functionality, the beauty and the effortless quality of movement are an emergent property of Natural Movement. You have to remember though, there are other kinds of natural movement such as awkwardness, self-consciousness, flinching, getting startled, being fearful and tentative in your movement that are less desirable. So we are clearly talking about a Sub-set of Natural Movement and that is Relaxed Natural Movement. Even animals have to learn to transform awkwardness into ability, look at tiger cubs or fauns playing. They take clumsy behavior and transform it into agile movement. Yes, it seems that play and pretend hunting and pretend fighting are the principle ways of learning this elsewhere in the Natural World. Oh yeah. This is juicy stuff here, we are hunter gatherers drawn to the distant horizon by pattern and meaning guided by this compass called Bio-Aesthetics.

Exit: Stage Left

I’ve said else where that the life long path of studying Martial Arts is analogous to growing up again. We bring all the same variables that we played out in a less conscious role the first time around to a more robust symbolic redux. Actually, think of it as acting. It gets you past thinking of these moments where we “act up” or “act out” as the inequities, failures and the horrible missteps that they were and puts them in the more useful language of our role and the part we are playing in The Play. Remember, we have secured a limited engagement here so we will have many more performances of this drama to find and demonstrate our character.

In the future I will write my own play or even leave the theater but for now at least I write my own dialogue. Everyone has a role; the teachers, the students, the actors and the audience. If we are brave enough we will dare to make the kind of mistakes that will torture us inside for weeks. If the teacher is up to it they will call us out in this moment so we feel the importance and probably the long sorry history that has led to this single moment and it is excruciating. There are moments to hold your ground, those to change course a little and there is a time to change everything down to our DNA. Well some people require a disaster to create the tipping point.

The beautiful thing about the play is we care enough to make it real to ourselves but in the end it is not the central experience of our lives. If we don’t demonstrate our evolution in our ”real life” by being more connected to our families and loved ones and being more patient and caring in action rather than in just rhetoric we have not gotten to the part of the play when the Fourth Wall comes down and we connect all the dots. Beyond that there is a piece of mind that comes inside with the comfort of being in the right place in that process of playing a role, learning your part and coming into your own.

But back to the beautiful disaster – It is amazing that within the context of The Play we can make the kind of mistakes that in real life end in broken relationships or even broken arms! The difference here is that the teacher is just playing a role, actually one that you hired them for; the role of Antagonist or Deuteragonist. If the teacher is up to it they will not be constrained by wanting to be liked or worried that they might come off as being harsh and judgmental. In my role as a teacher I was always too likable and responsive. The next time around I am going to be idiosyncratic and go off on my students in a highly erratic and scary ass way whenever they ask me to. That’s the way I want to play that part next.

I was raised by Tai Chi Mormons, fundamentalists you know. We used to hate on External Martial Artists and ranks and belt tests. Well I have infiltrated an external sect and have learned their secret ways and found that they actually have merit. The Belt Test is not an achievement test it is a ritual or a ceremony. The teacher has seen you in multiple situations against multiple opponents in class so they already know your level. If the teacher can put you under duress or hopefully intimidate you then you get to see how your current Mind Body programming behaves during (simulated) extreme stress. It is not pretty. Whatever is in RAM will fail you, whatever is in ROM will be magnified, very edifying indeed, thank you.

I have played my part and I have mis-played my part, I have become confused by the Play immersing myself within it at the expense of my other life. As the curtain falls I resolve to reinvent my approach to the craft and to the theater. Exit: Stage Left.

The Accidental Tourist

As I wandered down this Garden Path of Tai Chi I passed by landmarks of personal truth. I don’t know if these are general truths but they are real to me and an important part of the journey that I have made so far. As I have traveled deeper I have moved from one place to another; from one certainty to the next (mutually exclusive) certainty, I have moved

from indifference to interest
from gross movement to fine movement
from solitary to individual
from isolated to integrated
from confined to expressive
from preconceived to exploratory
from random to purposeful
from voluntary to involuntary
from intended to accidental

When I moved from Indifference to Interest that was a surprise to me, I mean I thought that I was engaged and observant. When the world opened up in Tai Chi everything was new and had to be looked at and observed in a way that was almost Psychedelic for those who understand that shorthand.

I moved from Gross movement to Fine movement when I entered in Sub-Space, the smaller, finer more internal movements were more interesting to me. This feeling of Fluidic-Space or Churning the Ether goes away when you make those big movements, you have to get very still and quiet inside.

When I first felt myself moving from Solitary to Individual it was in a group doing Tai Chi. I had to let go of my Ego Self and submit to the Group Mind. I retained my singularity as a node in the neural net and felt the interplay between my individuality and my environment. I had to let go of my Solitude first.

As I changed from Isolated to Integrated it was first in the context of my environment as I mentioned in the previous point and then within my self. I had worked for years at isolations; working an area completely separately from the surrounding areas. As I knit all the individuated centers together I discovered Integration of structure and movement.

These movements inside the body grew from Confined to Expressive. At first it was lightning in a bottle but as it grew a magical thing happened; I learned to project this energy. With a push, a touch or a Gesture I became the conductor of this unfinished symphony, this Music of the Spheres. As a performance art Tai Chi can be so expressive.

Like a good conductor I followed the program. But Energy has a voice of it’s own and I was moved from Preconceived to Exploratory. Sometimes while doing Slow Set I would come to a place and take a hidden path I hadn’t noticed before. I would consciously go off-road and when I was done I would consciously return and continue through the set to the end. This isn’t the same as spacing out or getting lost!! You know who you are!

I did lose my way and wander off sometimes. The shift from Random to Purposeful was to not entertain every single notion that came through my head but to allow certain dynamics to evolve and others to dissipate. It is this feeling of direction or progress that creates a very satisfying feeling of Purpose.

As I played with the psychic valves that change this process from Voluntary to Involuntary I felt the surrender to the inexorable current of the Dao. Was I giving up Free Will? What was this Surrender? Is this the thing that the Mystics talk about? I could feel this even in 2 person practice now and it feels like following not like leading.

Now in Push Hands all of the best moves changed from Intended to Accidental. When people pushed at me sometimes accidents happened to that person. Oops, they tripped, slipped, went the wrong way, got confused for a second or just plain fell down on their own for no reason at all. Oops, let me help you up, ouch, ooh, oh that looks like it hurt!! Hmmm, sorry about that.

I had planned a very orderly and structured curriculum for myself. I had set out with a clear road map to Mastery. I was in the drivers seat. Well, something happened and I wound up in the passenger seat with the road map long discarded and in unfamiliar territory. I had become the Accidental Tourist.

Opening the Door

I have long wondered why Tai Chi leads to the kind of breaking through, breaking down and breaking open that it does. I have seen it time and time again. Even though I try not to be a “Spiritual Teacher” or even to have a touchy feely environment in my classes it happens anyway. Some people have opined that the “mere Tai Chi” that I teach is not the really deep level of repatterning that constitutes indoor teaching; I do just teach Form, but it still happens anyway. Well, this is what I have observed.

Mechanical centers – There are numerous hinges in the body that we learn to open and close in Tai Chi. At first this is in the form of isolations, the ability to move that joint without moving all the surrounding areas as usual. As we do the form we are slowly and consciously opening and then closing these hinges. We create new pathways and begin to physically change at this level. The joints open up, the surrounding structures receive increased blood flow and after a while we start to feel an energy in the body associated with this action.

Electrical centers – It turns out that many of these hinges that we are opening and closing are located at important electrical junction boxes is the body. These plexus areas have numerous nerve systems all coming together and tying into central relay stations. The centers get fired up and start to run at a higher voltage or frequency in the order that the student can consciously manipulate the mechanical joint. I have observed that the Coccygeal, the Pelvic and the Solar Plexus usually open up first and that the Thoracic hinge and the Cervical Spinal hinge open up later. It is at this stage that Chi Sickness, Psychological Issues and Psychic Aspects begin to manifest. I usually start thinking at this point that some experience as a therapist might not be a bad idea for a Tai Chi teacher.

Psycho spiritual centers – It is no coincidence that at the same location as these hinges and plexus points are the Chakra energetic valves. Once the mechanical hinges are opened and the electrical connections are clearing away old blockages then the Chakras start to clear up and open up. I will tell you that for those who are lightly sprung or have deep seated issues this can be a very big deal. I think that those who can find someone who is a professional in energy medicine do much better and those who think that they understand it or that their practice will be adequate to deal with it do not fare so well.

I have heard that some people learn gradually, always adding to their knowledge base and their experience in an incremental and orderly way. Actually, I have never seen this but I have heard it is possible. What I have seen is a Big Bang, a massive explosion at the center of one’s universe that brings one to their knees. I can tell those who have had it from those who have not. Do not mistake this for injury. Many have a deep injury which they carry. They can nurture, amplify and replay that injury but it doesn’t lead to a breakthrough. The reason is that there is an inability to pass through the doorway of fear and surrender to the transformation. This is one of the most important things that can happen for a Human; to find our true purpose and our true worth. In my life it was a difficult transition which has made all the difference and it all began with Opening the Door.

The Left Hand of Darkness

Where the shadow
Meets the ground
Something lost
Is finally found

Where the soul
Meets the sky
We begin the change
To beings of light

The Left Hand of Darkness
Reaching out towards Infinity
This gesture filled with Wisdom and Release

This inner peace
Begins to make us whole
There’s a piece
That’s broken in us all

Three days grace
Shall give thee time
Take these tools
To change your life

When the student seeks
The teacher’s gift
To claim their power
And their truth

You can
Change the future
In this hour
We greet the dawn

Find
The inner guide
Now your
Teacher is inside

Where the shadow
Meets the ground
Something lost
Is finally found

Where the soul
Meets the sky
We begin the change
To beings of light