Professor Cheng Man-chi’ing, in his work Thirteen Chapters On T’ai Chi Ch’uan, tells us that to study t’ai chi, we must begin by “investing in loss.” It is a call for flexibility in our mind and body.  The example he gives us is the teeth and tongue. 

We all know that the teeth are rigid and the tongue is soft.  As he states, “the teeth and tongue occasionally have disagreements, and the tongue must invest in loss, but in the end of the teeth will crumble from hardness, while the tongue survives through softness.”

This summer has been an exercise in investing in loss for me.  I have had to relax with decisions that are difficult, and keep faith in the path I have chosen.  I know that the flexibility to choose difficulty, to forego the easy for the hard may not show any reward right now, but I do know it is the RIGHT thing to do. 

This was extremely apparent in the after the death of a family member, my sister, two weeks ago.  She had chosen to not be in communication with me for over 20 years and I had many ambiguous feelings when I did get in touch with her and discovered she needed assistance, being confined to a nursing home, and bedridden.  The hurt in me wanted to bring hardness to the situation.  She wasn’t there for me and deliberately stayed out of communication. 

But…

I didn’t know what was going on those 20 years, and she had losses of her own.  Her husband died and perhaps speeded her entry into the nursing home.  She was lonely.  Her daughter lived far away.  Her son was incarcerated.  I elected softness, compassion. 

I helped her with small things; a cell phone, the bureacracy of the Arizona Long Term Care system.  I’m not sorry, and those brief months where we talked were a reward for me.  She was in pain the whole time, and her death was sudden.  I am grateful for the opportunity to connect, and I'm glad she is no longer suffering.

This concept is one more way the study and teaching of t’ai chi enhances my life.  If I am nimble, if I am flexible, I can survive the tough times.  Rigid thoughts, unwillingness to change when necessary, that’s when the storms of life can break us. 

Do or Do Not...There is No TRY (Yoda)
Listen to yourself sometime.  Do your words reflect your intentions?  Your true intentions?  Our words are so very important, because they launch our intention into the world.   Be careful with the words you say, because they are paving the road to either reach your goals and dreams – or keep them forever out of reach.

As I go about the teaching of the martial arts, I find myself paying enormous attention to how people speak, the actual words they use.  My students know that I have no patience for the phrase “I can’t.”  “I can’t” usually means something else entirely.  It means “I won’t”,  “I don’t want to” or “I’m afraid.”  Any of those are acceptable to me because they reflect honesty with our self.  “I can’t” is an excuse, an escape hatch that allows us to throw in the towel of defeat, and to do so while convincing ourselves that we are not good enough.  I don’t allow those words in my classes. 

Another phrase that offers an escape hatch from reaching our goals is the phrase “I’ll try.”  We are all familiar with our resolutions to lose weight, save money, eat better, write that novel.  As long as we couch those desires into words with an escape hatch, we are doomed to frustration.  As long as we are “trying” to lose weight, it’s okay if we don’t, because we are only trying.  As long as we are “trying” to make our dream come true of being a published author, it’s okay if we don’t do anything about it, because we are only “trying.” 

What is the alternative?  When we speak differently, we act differently, and we think differently.  If you are in charge of planning a wedding and the date is set, there’s a whole different way of thinking about it.  There are lists of tasks to complete, a timeline to be kept, because that date isn’t going to move.  So we better move, right?

If our dreams are important to us, then we need to bring that CONCRETE, TANGIBLE thinking to them.  If we want to lose weight, make more money, write a novel, the first step is to see that result like a tangible, concrete thing.  Like a stone in your hand with weight, texture, color, smell, even taste.

Shift into concrete mode when thinking about a goal.  Some key points:

1. Visualize the end result with clarity and record it.
2. Verbalize the intention, describe it and record it in writing or another method.
3. List, again in writing, what activities will lead to that result.  Be specific.
4. Schedule the end result.  Give yourself a timeline.  If it’s a long way off, schedule the leading tasks for completion.
5. Evaluate on a regular basis.  Are my activities getting me closer to my goal?  If not, change them.

Pay attention to the way you speak, and if you really want something to change, speak about it in a positive, concrete way.  There is no "try."

Anxiety has been a companion my entire life.  Throughout my youth and early adulthood, I worried about everything, and planned contingencies for it all.  It turned me into a great planner, but I never had much fun.

One of the great gifts martial arts has given to me is a certain amount of peace, and some skills in staying in this moment – without borrowing tomorrow's troubles.  Of all those skills, breathing has got to be the number one on the list.

Seems odd, probably.  If I didn't breathe, I wouldn't actually be ALIVE after all, so how can that be a skill?  

First of all, there's recognizing that you aren't breathing well.  Anxiety can be brought on by shallow breathing.  In a vicious circle, when we are anxious, we also breathe shallowly.  Recognition and awareness of this situation is the really skill I'm talking about here.  

For me, that's the first thing I check when I feel that creeping tide of worry and anxiousness mounting:  am I breathing high in my chest?  If I am, I deliberately draw my breath down deep into my belly and abdomen. 

Second, I acknowledge the fear and then counter by looking at my present circumstances.  Am I in physical danger?  If I am comfortable, safe, dry, I hold that truth and take a second deep breath, again as deep into my core as I can.

Third, I try to look calmly at one thing that is distressing me, and try to assess whether it's something I can actually do anything about.  If not, I take a third deep breath and acknowledge that this one is out of my hands.  If I can do something, I pick one task or activity to do FIRST, and then I breathe into that.

This is a simple exercise, and it's helped me more than I can describe.  Try it, and hopefully you will benefit too.

I was standing on one side of the mat.  Three of my friends were standing opposite of me. One was armed with a sword, another with a knife, the third had no weapon.  They were wooden, but still weapons.

The shihan called “hajime” –begin, in Japanese, and chaos broke out. 

In jiyuwaza (or randori), the first thing you have to do is to run toward the conflict, the chaos.  You pick out the first partner and start the flow.  A good jiyuwaza round has elements of chaos, but there’s also a flow a rhythm, that’s works well—as long as you don’t stop, as long as you continue to move into the storm.

Our daily lives can be like that.  Sometimes we wake up and look at the landscape of the day, and we just flat don’t want to do the day.  It’s too much, it’s a pain, it’s overwhelming.  If we spend too much time looking at it, “not wanting to do the day” turns into “I can’t do the day. “ The first step into the fray is absolutely the most important.

The first step: pick something, anything and just do it.  The now-famous commencement speech at University of Texas by Navy Admiral William McRaven talks about his life lessons from SEAL training:  the first thing you do everyday is make your bed. 

Long before that speech made it on to YouTube, I began that practice.  Every morning the bed gets made, and I’ve done one thing.  No matter what else happens, I’ve got that one thing done—my first partner has been engaged.

From there, you go from partner to partner and take opportunities to rest or regroup where you can, but you always stay moving.  Sometimes that’s called being proactive, but mostly it’s just being willing, ready and start engaging the day, the task, the moment. One of the best pieces of career advice came to me from a coworker named Rusty, a million years ago at my first job (McDonald’s).  He told me that it would get chaotic, but that it was okay.  Just don’t stop moving.  Embrace the chaos, and keep moving.

The more we think about a thing, the bigger it gets.  More times than I can count I have dreaded an important conversation.  I’ve worried about the other person’s reaction, and it’s turned out a much smaller issue than the one inside my head.  If I stop moving, the situation becomes much larger, and more complex.

When I keep moving, it takes less energy, and I am more ready for the moment.  I move toward the storm, the chaos.

Embrace the chaos.  Take on the first partner.  Stay in motion.

I don’t do a list of New Year’s Resolutions.  For me, it’s always been an opportunity to break a bunch of promises to myself.  I am making an exception this winter season, though: I am making one commitment.  I’m going to do what I tell my youngest students in every single class.  I am going to pay attention.

The last 12 months have been rewarding, nerve wracking, inspirational and anxiety creating.  The last three I feel like I’ve been caught in a wind tunnel of appointments, opportunities, projects, and expectations.  I found myself seeking moments when the phone wouldn’t sound, the e-mail would be dormant.  I went on a reading campaign that kept the library busy finding volumes to fill my need to feel secure.

Two of those books in that long list were Buddhist volumes, by monks who could write in a way that resonated with me.  I read my own words coming back to me:  Pay attention. 

Don’t pay attention to any one thing.  Pay attention to the now.  What am I doing in this moment?  Focus on that, and only that.  Cook with attention, gratitude and enjoy the feeling of preparation of nutritious and tasty dishes.  Cleaning the bathroom?  I am doing it as an act of love for myself, because I enjoy a clean environment.  Working on a lesson plan?  How can I put the maximum enjoyment out of a true gift, sharing my love of martial arts with students who have become friends. 

Even as I write, I know this commitment isn’t easy.  I am tempted to get up, look out the window, get a snack, anything to move change my focus.  But I also know that finishing this essay will be its own reward, and maybe someone will get a lesson or an inspirational moment from it.  It is also part of my commitment to pay attention.

This commitment has already caused me to change my behaviors.  I plan each activity, because it is important.  If I commit time to an activity, it is going to be with as close to 100% of my effort, skills, attention as I have the ability to muster.  This commitment has caused me to revise and shorten my normal list of stuff to do.  I am doing fewer activities, but each one is done as well as I can possibly do it, and I have to actually ask myself “How important is this activity?  Does it warrant an investment of time?”  It is absolutely amazing how this changes what you do when you pay attention to the value of the time and effort expended.  So far, the house is cleaner, and I have gotten more done for my clients and my students.

I’ve also gotten more rest, because when I decide to rest, to watch a football game, I am THERE, I am paying attention and I know that I am deliberately doing something I enjoy.

A black belt.  I've worn one on the mat for over 15 years now, but I still pause when I put it on, and contemplate for a moment what it means. Even more so when I prepare to put it around a student's waist after the completion of the long process of earning it.  The moment when it's first put on is the culmination of years of classes, effort, correction, more practice, more correction.  It's such an accomplishment, such a pinnacle.   You've made that elusive goal.

At the same time, it's a beginning.  A beginning of more practice, of a different mindset, of perhaps teaching.  From that perspective, you're back at the bottom, at the beginning, looking up at a new path to a different pinnacle.

Enjoy the photos of Grace & Megan's pinnacle, because they accomplished all the hard work and demonstrated the skills of aikido so beautifully last Saturday.

Now they are at the beginning.

What goals are you achieving, projects are you accomplishing, that put you at the beginning?  Starting over is a precious gift, and the specialness, the uniqueness of each accomplishment is the door that opens to the next challenge.

I spent many years in a corporate job, and went through training after training class on thinking about problems as opportunities. I listened and cynically had the attitude that the opportunities were hard to spot in the jungle of blame that often accompanies problems in the workplace.

My practice of Aikido has cast a new light on what a problem is and how to spot that opportunity.

Most aikido styles are non-competitive, and some are more martial than art, and some are the opposite.  One thing ALL styles have is that we cannot do Aikido alone.  We need partners.  As we participate in our training, the question is—do we have a partner, or an opponent, and what’s the difference?

A good partner is both—partner and opponent.  They offer us the energy of an attack to test our technique.  What a gift – otherwise how can we improve our technique, learning how to turn an all out attack into the resolution of pin or throw? An attack, in the environment of the dojo, is an opportunity, to learn.

A partner might know from experience exactly how much to resist or how much energy to put into that attack to test us.  Another partner might have had a bad day or be inexperienced–and that’s a gift as well.  We need the wisdom of the experienced partner and sometimes the wall of non-cooperation another might offer.  It all goes into our own experience and allows us to challenge and grow as aikidoka.  Even though we might wish for things to be different, those really are gifts.

In everyday life, obstacles crop up, and we might wish for things to be different.  The gift of obstacles allows us to test ourselves, to improve our technique for dealing with the challenges we face—and the unknown challenges to come.

Cliché or not, a partner and an opponent, a problem and an opportunity–it really depends on OUR attitude as we engage.

OSU.

Awareness is a skill, just like balance, driving a car, riding a bike.  Many times we don’t pay attention to what is going on around us—or even with our own bodies.  For example, ever come discover a set of bruises that you have no idea how you acquired? Or possibly travelled most of the way to a destination but not aware of the trip?

Practice awareness in your surroundings by taking a few minutes to notice one new thing.  This is a great thing to do on your journey to your workplace each day.  If you can't find a new thing, try altering your route.  This gets us out of "remote control" mode and engaged in our trip (and maybe out of an accident).

A physical practice of awareness is to practice your balance by losing it.  Sounds crazy, but it's simple:

Stand with your feet side by side and touching.  SLOWLY lean forward until you lose your balance and take a step.  While your leaning forward, really concentrate on that moment when your are losing balance--when can you tell?  Can you pull back into balance?

This practice comes from t'ai chi the grand ultimate in balanced movement.

As we engage in activities to make our bodies healthier, we all know how beneficial it is to stretch those muscles and ligaments, to gently (or not so gently it seems) extend our range of motion beyond what is comfortable.  We may not like it, but it’s Good For Us.

What about those mental muscles?  I’m not talking about intellect or intelligence, but our comfort zone—what we believe is possible for us.

This is a critical concept, because many times our biggest obstacle, our most insistent source of limitations, is our belief in what we can do. 

• We don’t start that craft project, because we have never tried it before and we don’t know that we’d be good at it. 
• We don’t try to go horseback riding because we’ve been afraid of horses, but we think it might be fun.
• Our fear of water holds us back from swimming, although it would be easier on us than the treadmill.
• We don’t start that new class that sounds interesting because, well, we didn’t get around to it—easier to stay home.

If any of these sound like familiar conversations you’ve had with yourself, then it might be that you need to work on the flexibility of your comfort zone. 

Now, let’s get real here.  No one is going to cure a fear of heights by skydiving.  That’s not what we’re talking about at all.   Think about gently stretching your sense of possibility.  If you take a rubber band and look at it, you can observe its natural shape and size.  Then if you place it on an object, say around a stack of cards, that is just a little bigger than the rubber band, just enough to hold them together, and leave it there for awhile, that size becomes the natural shape.  We’ve noticed this, as we “wear out” a rubber band and soon need to double it to get the hold we need on that stack of cards.

Just like the rubber band, we can expand our comfort zone.  Here are some suggestions:

• Take a class.  If you’re uncomfortable in new environments, take a friend.  If you’re nervous about the content (swimming lessons when the idea of swimming amounts to “survival while I’m in the water”), talk to the instructor about your fears beforehand.
• Approach something new in small steps.  Start with just researching that craft project.  What does it really take?  How can you break it up and commit to those small pieces until you’re done.
• Plan.  Sometimes a new activity is scary when we look at the whole thing at once (that really is a BIG mountain…), but becomes a lot less overwhelming if we simply only need to look for walking shoes, then a route, obtain a map, and pick a date.
• Give yourself permission to bail out.  If it’s completely uncomfortable, scary or downright dangerous, don’t feel bad about letting it go.  Sometimes that’s an expansion too.

The more we walk right up to the edge of what we are comfortable doing, being, believing, the more our comfort zone expands.  If we stay well within our comfort zone boundaries, pretty soon those boundaries get smaller and smaller. 

Think about that the next time you’re tempted to do something new—but just don’t know if you’ll like it.  Step out—you never know what cool adventure might be waiting.

T’ai Chi is an unusual exercise form in that it descends from martial arts practiced up to 1,200 years ago in China.  The legends of its origin are many and varied, but have a common theme that the founders were great students of nature, and developed the movements of the form from studying the movements of animals, birds, and reptiles.  The most famous story involves a monk who watched a battle between a swan and a snake.  As the swan struck at the snake in linear, direct movements, the snake used its coils to create circles and evade each attack.

Those are fantastic tales and legends, but the modern application of T’ai Chi is what we’re talking about today.  Simply put, t’ai chi (the grand ultimate) is a great complement to any fitness regimen, and can assist the athlete in three distinct areas:

    •    Mind/Body awareness
    •    Balance
    •    Stamina

T’ai Chi is practiced slowly with great care and deliberation.  As we practice each movement, we train our minds to be conscious of our balance, and our form.  As we gain control over our minds, it gives us the ability to feel and hear as our body responds to each movement.  Taken into other areas, even when the exercise is performed more quickly and swiftly, it helps us to improve the form, to be able to replicate movements recommended by coaches and to quickly progress in the practice of other forms of training.

Balance is often taken for granted.  When we are young, we think we either “have it or we don’t” and can’t really improve our sense of balance and grace.  Most often, again, balance is much more about our mind and ability to pay attention than any natural abilities or aptitudes.  T’ai Chi practice slows us down, allows us to understand when our body is “on balance” or “off balance.”  We then realize we have choices, and can choose to perform movements that make the most sense and gain a greater understanding of our own bodies and our balance.

The final note for this column is on stamina.  T’ai Chi is performed so slowly and with such deliberation that it couldn’t possibly contribute to overall fitness…or could it?  On this I would like to end with a personal anecdote.  In 2009 when I was preparing for my 4th Degree Aikido Black Belt test, I was extremely worried about my stamina during the lengthy test (over 30 minutes of intense partner work, falling and defensive technique), because I am NOT a model of fitness and athleticism.   I didn’t really do anything toward developing my stamina during training—all my efforts were improving technique and remembering the 150 different defenses that were part of the test (I was only going to have to do seven, but mistakes led to failure to promote).  

My schedule didn’t permit me to do additional cardio training, but during this time I was teaching some 5 to 8 hours of t’ai chi weekly.

The day of the examination came, and I was really worried, but the test, more intense than I actually expected, with a longer free-style sparring period, was over before I even started to tire.  The only difference was that during that 6 month run up, was the amount and duration of t’ai chi.  

T’ai chi was the difference in that test, and in many of the physical activities I enjoy.  I encourage anyone to add t’ai chi to their routine and see the impact for yourself.