Tai chi trains you to slow down

Photo by Shizhao

Part 4 in the Living in the Moment series.

Tai chi may be the next yoga. But for the moment, this Chinese martial art still puzzles most Americans. It's a 3,000-year-old sport without balls, superstars or competition. Old folks do it. The rules are slowness, softness, yielding and letting go. The postures can take years to comprehend. And there are no sexy outfits or accessories to buy. What’s the point?

The point is that through its twenty-four flowing postures, you are physically practicing the art of slowness. Tai chi is an internal martial art, which to me means that instead of fighting an outside enemy, we are fighting ourselves. Winning is not the goal. Slowing down, like speeding up, is a muscle that develops with training. More accurately, it retrains the mind, using the body as its tool. Jodi Kaufman, an instructor in Berkeley, describes the effect best. "In tai chi, you become soft outside, with a core of steel."

Beyond the significant physical health benefits, tai chi reminds us of what it feels like inside to go slowly. "Our culture values aggressively moving forward until we crash and burn out, "observes Kaufman. "In tai chi, we move our energy forward, then yield backward, like waves that go on forever." Physically, the movements are all graceful circles and unimpeded flow. Metaphysically,  tai chi is all about human being. In fact, it claims the yin-yang symbol of balance for its own.

Our natural pace aligns with nature's seasons, but we artificially speed that up. Constant multitasking, overbooking, then blacking out with sleep creates a life of catch-up and anxiety. Tai chi manages to slow time down to its natural pace. It allows the mind to rest calmly in the present moment, while the body flows with chi energy. "Tai chi has to be done one move at a time, "Kaufman instructs. "There are no shortcuts. You can't hurry through it."

Nevertheless, I found that my mind fought slowing down every time. I sweated through the first class practicing two barely-moving standing forms, horse stance to empty stance and back. My calves ached for days afterward, like I’d been walking stairs in high heels. After a while,  the gentle repetitions of parting the wild horse’s mane and grasp the bird's tail began to lull and soothe my mind. “Slowing down helps you become aware of and control your monkey mind – a mind that jumps from place to place without the ability to stay focused for prolonged periods of time,” writes Bruce Frantzis, Tai Chi master and author of The Big Book of Tai Chi.

The slower I went and the longer I stretched out a motion, the calmer I felt. Paradoxically, I gained more self-control. There was no limit to how slow you can go, the way there is with how fast you can go. That seems to be tai chi’s challenge. Slowing down a simple motion like walking into its infinitesimal parts baffles a mind set on auto-pilot. Tai chi walking, a set of three postures, became so abstract that my mind simply shut off. It was a delicous moment. I can call up that sudden feeling of stillness from my speeding life and feel like the calm at the eye of the storm.

For more information: Contact Sho Sho Smith at whimsicaltaxidermy@gmail.com.