Tag: Mind

Imagination

We can help each other’s t’ai chi practice with imagination. We can stretch our spirits with images, metaphors and partnering exercises that involve listening and following the energy coming from your fellow participants.

For example, indulge your imagination and engage your breathing, body and center. Imagine your whole body suspended as if from a string from the top of your head. Try and actually feel gravity embracing your body weight down through your feet. Think in terms of emptying your mind of chattering voices and daily anxieties that clutter your life and thoughts. Focus on your center, your dan tien, and find reservoirs of calm and attentiveness that result.

Thus the imagination allows us to stretch our possibilities in movement and meditation and facilitates the ‘letting go’ so essential to t’ai chi and Daoism, a Chinese philosophy/religion based on accepting change. When we learn we control nothing, we unleash new potential to manage our attitudes and responses to daily “obstacles,” exercise our imaginations, and live the consequences of our actions and behaviors. Our classes strive to cultivate our minds and imaginations in the t’ai chi journey in a safe and nurturing environment.

Meditation

Meditation proves elusive for many of us, so we find solace in t’ai chi’s breathing, postures and movement to ‘eliminate random thoughts’. That can be the rub – quieting the mind from the noises, stresses and worries of everyday life. T’ai chi opens the gateway immediately to all in the search for ways to meditate. With quiet standing we can simply count our breaths, slow, quiet and continuous and concentrate our minds on our dan-tiens (centers). Easier said than done, we help each other by practicing ‘moving meditation’ with our t’ai chi and qi-gong exercises together.  As quickly as possible, we try to share techniques and integrate the t’ai chi instruction with letting go of random thoughts, and worse, worries, that clutter our minds and distract our living in the moment.  Sooner rather than later, we discover that simply practicing t’ai chi provides a meditative path to promoting centering, calm and tranquility.