A few weeks ago our Sunday Tai Chi class had an extraordinary experience. It was smaller due to the weather and for the most part it was the intermediate/advanced group (and 2 adventurous newer students). Rather than split into groups for specific levels as we usually do, we all stayed together. I decided to make it a leap-frog flow class, my favorite way to practice - practice a few movements, start over, repeat, add a few, start over repeat, keep adding etc. By the end of the 75-minute class we made it through the whole form, having repeated sections of it many times. I spoke little more than calling out the names of the movements. The effect of the practice was meditative and deep; one could feel the change of consciousness in oneself and in the practice hall.
I posit most people who are curious about Tai Chi and Qigong are looking for this feeling. Even those who know nothing about the art sense this possibility when observing groups of people flowing together. There was a big upsurge in enrollment after the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, for example. Whether consciously or not, I believe this flow, this quiet connection to the fluid rhythms of life is something we all crave. All the teachers I have ever had have been masters at creating this experience for students. Intuitively they, without effort, slip us out of our heads and into our bodies. And in doing so also into something bigger, into a connection to all that is.
As I drove home, I reflected on what I was feeling. I recognized more than any specific form learned from my teachers this flow state is the lineage I have been given. This is what lured me into the arts in the first place and keeps me here to this day. Of course, I love the details and deeper explanations, but those are not what has kept me tethered to my practice. I remembered this is why I teach and what I love about the teaching experience: being together in this way with people and as best I can, passing on methods for achieving it.
Driving through the 99 tunnel I also realized I have been feeling a great deal of grief this past year. I didn’t quite realize this subtle malaise that has accompanied me on my daily to and fro’s was this. I thought I was simply tired from the herculean efforts made from crawling back from the rupture covid caused. To be honest, there have been more than a few times I have missed the bonding the early days of covid engendered in us all. Of course there was so much suffering, but it also held potential and hope for deep change. We all, for a moment in time, shared something profound: the intimacy of the unknown. It was sacred. It’s different now. It must be different. And we are all finding our way through to whatever is next. And yet for me grief has had its own gravitational pull, setting up residence in corners of my life I have forgotten to look in.
Seeing out through those opaque corners has made 2022 awkward, disparate and clumsy. I have not been sure how to simply be with friends, at the store, or even by myself. Through these years of online pandemic necessity, my work has become habituated into using so many words. I look at the screen and see people I know and love and wonder if I am excavating anything useful to explain the unexplainable. Many times of late I have wondered if I have anything left to say. Yet flowing together in relative silence that Sunday reminded me there is still plenty to say: quietness is its own conversation. Breathing in and out tells us more than any words can.
All of our classes for the remainder of this session, both in person and online, have been devoted to this quiet flow. In doing so I have been reminded that while grief has its own pull, so does life. Life beckons us up and expands us outward. Flowing in synchronized stillness, be it in a class or simply recognizing you and the person next to you in the grocery story are, in fact, breathing together, allows us to co-exist beyond the duality of everyday life. It restores us. And if we let it, it can restore our confidence for humanity and its evolution.
Wishing us all restored confidence in our place in life as we flow the unknown in 2023 together.
“With all this talking, what had been said? Take time to listen without words, worship the unnamable, embrace the unformed.”