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Garden
If you stand in your garden and watch the plants, you will see
nothing growing.
Yet the plants are growing.
All of the time.
This is how nature operates.
Your body
Your body took years of bad usage,
abuse and neglect to grow into the
condition it is in right now.
This cannot be remedied overnight.
Parts
It is not possible to simply swap
bad/faulty parts for good/new ones.
You are not a mechanical object. You are
biological.
Changes to the body take time.
Impatience
People want a quick fix.
They seek immediate results.
Instant gratification.
Your body will not grow any faster because you are
impatient.
It is literally akin to watching the grass grow.
Forcing
When a person forces a change to their body
there are often adverse consequences.
They injure their shoulder, their knees, their
back.
They have a heart attack.
You cannot force change.
Forcing involves resistance and
conflict; which are not good qualities.
The very act of forcing is in itself an admission of
failure.
Wu wei
In tai chi we teach people to work with the body rather than
against it.
We learn how to 'listen' to our body.
When something does not feel right, we stop and
examine it.
Pain is a warning and discomfort warrants further investigation.
Usually there is an error in how the material
is being practiced.
Demons
Tai chi is mild.
There is no forcing involved.
Many of the problems facing a student are of
their own devising.
Rather than just practice and show
patience, the student is
erratic and
aggressive.
They seek a short-cut and they inevitably fail.
Progress cannot be forced.
The grass grows all by itself
If you leave a garden to grow, it will.
Providing there is adequate rain, the plants get larger and the grass grows all
by itself.
With tai chi we are like gardeners; we
encourage healthy growth and re-train
the body.
But we must also sit back and wait.
Half-dead
Being aware of bad
habits is a major first step.
Most people are not at one with their own body.
They shamble around as though wearing an
unresponsive carcass of flesh.
This condition is particularly poignant when the
individual in question is not even 30 years old.
Life is over before it has even
started...
Medical treatment
In modern times there is a great dependency upon
Western medicine.
People seek to solve health problems
quickly using medication or surgery.
These methods may fix the immediate problem but the
underlying cause is seldom
addressed.
Eating habits and poor body
usage are often the cause of poor health.
These cannot be fixed by surgery or prescription medication.
Alternative
The holistic approach is to
work with the natural processes of the body, to
improve body awareness, to learn new
habits and steadily grow a healthier, more
resilient body.
Not therapy
Tai chi is not a form of therapy.
With therapies, the patient/client is dependent
upon the therapist for treatment.
Somebody else does the work for you.
Responsibility
In tai chi, you do the work.
You are responsible.
It is up to you to address your lifestyle,
manage your health and exercise as you see fit.
The ego must be subdued, the
mind brought
back to the here and now, and the
awareness expanded.
Niwa: a pure place
A healthy garden takes time to grow.
It does not occur immediately.
Time, effort
and patience are necessary.
You must cultivate, invest and allow.
It was around the beginning of the
industrial revolution that the idea that human beings were like machines
came into being. The body was seen as being like a clockwork toy, capable of
being taken apart, parts replaced and then put back together again. Although
this perspective has produced powerful life saving procedures, this view
also limits our awareness of the wonders of the human body and life itself.
(Liz Koch)
Page created
21 May 1997
Last updated
16 June 2023
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