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I never imagined I would teach tai chi. My dad wanted to be a teacher, he was an MIT PhD who started as a researcher, and moved into management when he was older. He worked at a company called Bell Labs, around the time that Penzias and Wilson discovered noise from the earliest time of our universe. They used a huge horn-shaped antenna we would drive by, any time there was a family visit day at the office.
My dad – his name was also Mike – would talk sometimes about not so much loving management work. He missed his time at university, working on puzzles that nobody had solved before. But I was pretty little then, and mostly I remember his office Christmas parties. They had an amazing bakery in the basement (it was a big building), and made what I still think is the best birthday cake I’ve ever had.
When Tara and I got started with Strala nearly 20 years ago, it was a little after my dad had died, and I still wasn’t thinking I might be a teacher someday. I had moved through a few different kinds of work over the years, and what was mostly in my mind, if I had some idea about what I wanted for life, it wasn’t so directly about work. It was something I think came after a kind of rough road of life and health scares, for me and my family.
I wanted to live. In fact, every time I quietly said what I wanted in life, it always went something like this. I want to live, healthy, happy, for a very very long time. When Tara came along, it was, I want to live healthy, happy, and in love, for a very very long time. And then Daisy . . . I want to live healthy, happy, in love, and have a whole lot of fun, all of us together, for a very very long time to come.
Tara knew this. And probably well before I figured it out, she also knew that some of the other things I had done with my time didn’t quite fit, in particular, with me staying healthy. So when Tara got me to lead my first class in our living-room studio, back in 2007, and then when she let me keep going – very patiently – figuring out how to move from knowing how to do these things, to leading how to do these things . . . I think Tara knew that teaching, sharing all this with the people around us, would become, pretty much, exactly what I had always asked for. And as I shifted over the years more and more into working with the tai chi foundations, then sharing more and more tai chi and qigong classes, I found this way to bring together everything I had learned, with everything I wanted in my life, and everything I wanted to give.
It’s been 45 years since I first started in on these tai chi and qigong foundations. And about 5 years ago, we began sharing a “500+hour” year-long tai chi course, along with some shorter programs for practical applications, things like support for trauma and stress, back pain and healing, athletes and longevity. I’ve found myself recently looking back at these years, the unplanned parallels with my dad’s earlier work and what he wanted for his life, and started writing down what I’ve learned from tai chi. I’ll try to sum it up a bit below, and if you find something that makes a whole lot of sense also for you, let me know!
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12 Things I’ve Learned from Tai Chi
1 – Practice always, everywhere, in everything. Healing what can be healed from trauma, anxiety, stress, needs us not to suffer a bad position. It needs us to hear what our body is saying, and respond, now rather than later. Do a little something to make things a little better, now rather than later. Now is always here. Later is a different matter. Don’t wait. Don’t suffer a bad position. Change it. Make this choice, again and again, to practice transforming where we are into something that feels better, and works better.
2 – My old teacher would always say to me, if what you’re doing in here with me is different from what you’re doing out there, all day long, then what you’re doing here isn’t tai chi. Now so many years later, I know what he meant. Tai chi isn’t for being good at tai chi. It’s for everything else. For being better at being human, together.
3 – Five Rewrites for Trauma and Stress. From not ok and nothing can help, to ok and I have something to work with, to connected and thriving, you can change your story. There’s a framework here, that rebuilds what’s inside you, and how you carry that into what’s outside you. The reality of trauma doesn’t go away. But, it doesn’t have to keep its hold on how we function, feel, and respond to where we are, now.
4 – How do I keep from hurting myself when helping? Remember to put down what you just picked up. Unweighting practice in tai chi gives a path to replenishing, keeping yourself safe and sustainable – not by taking a vacation, although vacations are good, but through how you are and the choices you make, right in the middle of challenge.
5 – Transformation is about balance. And balance isn’t about standing on one foot. That ability is just a neat side effect. Balance is all of you working equally together, every part helping every other part. Imbalance is isolation, one part or two trying to hold it together for everything else, or, for everyone else.
6 – It’s not about being perfect. It’s about seeing the reality of you each day, each moment, and working with all that you are. That’s perfect.
7 – One to All. Eventually, we all meet the kind of challenge that is more than what one part of you can handle on its own. Could be something very simple, like standing on one foot for a long time. When it’s tough, you have a choice. You can get that part stronger … or, don’t do it with just that one part. Do it with all of you. That is the tai chi way of balance. Eventually, you reach a level of challenge where it’s beyond what any one part in isolation, or any one person in isolation, can do. Practice making that choice, for harmony over isolation. Learn to use all of you, to be in all of you, to bring all of you, into every challenge, all that you do.
8 – It’s not the pose, form, or movement in itself that does the work for you. It’s how you do what you do, the choices you see and make within the practices, that do the work, that transform where you are into something better. Of course it makes sense that creating a certain shape with your body – a perfect triangle or circle, or some fixed foot or hand position – isn’t going to make you healthier or more powerful. From a tai chi perspective, that kind of belief – make a copy of a shape to gain great things – would fall into the category of superstition. Tai chi, by contrast, is concerned with what’s provable and practically useful in the world, in real everyday life. And since all the tai chi forms are for connecting with yourself, objects in your environment, and with other people – all of which bring a great deal of real-life variety from moment to moment – of course tai chi forms are not about looking the same every time, or copying something static, like a picture. It’s how you do what you do, as you respond to the amazing variety of you and the life around you, that matters most.
9 – Feel what you feel. See the choices you have. Respond, right away. When we’re lucky enough to hear our body talking to us, to get that open line of communication with ourselves, keep it open. Ignore those feelings enough, they’ll go quiet, until there’s a louder knock at the door. Keep it open. What you feel is worth responding to, right away. And, it doesn’t take much. Choose to mobilize, so you’re not working against yourself. To harmonize, so you’re working with everything you’ve got, all together. To unweight, so you’re not piling on yourself until something breaks. See where you have these choices, and practice making them. Always, everywhere, in everything you do.
10 – It has been scientifically proven that no pain no gain, as a strategy for getting things done, is bad for our health. We might get some stuff done this way, but also break things, break ourselves, along the way. The science of stress has progressed to a point where we know, it’s not good for us to live in this chemical and neurological stress state. Stress can move in and make a home in us, especially when we think it’s what we need to endure, to get tough things, important things, done.
There’s another thing scientific research has done for us, not that we necessarily needed science to tell us this one. We can release harmful stress, and let go of dis-enabling tension, in both our bodies and our minds, through practices that mobilize, harmonize, and enable us, chemically, neurologically, and mechanically. We can accomplish more, more sustainably, more powerfully, when we bring the coordinated and mobilized version of ourselves into challenge, rather than the isolated, stressed, and immobilized version. Stress states are good for survival, but not for life. Tai chi gives us practices that are good for all of life, for all of you, always, everywhere, in everything. It’s the antidote we all need, for no pain no gain living.
11 – Freedom without structure, structure without freedom . . . both lead to a life that’s much less than who you are, much less than what you can be. Freedom to explore you and the world around you, with a structure that keeps your exploration sustainably safe, and enablingly powerful, this is found in tai chi, and expressed in the world.
12 – Freedom without structure becomes an act, a pretending about freedom, that crumbles in a world with challenge. Structure without freedom becomes rigid, dogmatic, and breakable, equally disempowering to one who sees freedom and responsibility to self and each other, as not an either-or choice, but a balanced expression of all. Tai chi brings us out of either-or, into a world of both, with all the richness and possibility that is truly here for us.
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Read more and reserve your early-bird spot in our 500+Hour Tai Chi Training here
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Read more and reserve your early-bird spot in our 25+Hour Training – Support for Trauma and Stress with Tai Chi here
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Thank you everybody so much, for being here, and for supporting each other in these practices, this way of giving support to all of our lives. I hope we get to keep going together here, for many many more years to come.
Mike
