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Healing with Tai Chi

What is Healing?

 

March 3, 2021

 

“Solutions are not always Black or White,

There are merits to each side,

In one you may see the light,

That the other does not hide” 7-2-75

 

There are many modalities that are available to help us to heal our mind and our body; to assist us

on our journey toward improving the quality of our lives and those we love.

 

Our world is faced with many who are not accepting their personal responsibilities to themselves and to mankind, who are not setting positive and attainable goals and researching their motivations to gain an insight into the values and consideration of all solutions. 

 

How many illnesses are connected to lifestyle choices, closed minds, false values, incorrect diets, and excesses of every description? So how can you compare and judge which system is best?  Best for what?  There are merits to all systems. Your mind and your understanding of experiences and environment are all important to understand how you received this pathology and provides a pathway as to how you might dissolve it as well.

 

I have written that Western medicine almost always measures the depth and solution of a medical problem based on testing to concur with your symptoms, which in my mind is too general and isolated as we are not all the same at any given point in time, so there must be another side to the symptom, and there is...   Classical Chinese Medicine always works on an individualized complete system-based solution whose purpose is to reduce the disharmony in your mind, body, and emotions that is creating this disharmony and pathology in the first place.  No one part or portion of your organism can be discounted in trying to define where the imbalance might lay and hence where the healing solution might be hiding.   I remember that years ago when your general practitioner took care of you and your entire family in his home office.  He knew you all so well that he could ask those probing questions about how you were feeling emotionally while he listened to your vital signs to better understand how you were really doing. That is closest I knew as a child to the complete system of healing we are discussing here.

And I believe that your medical records were not public knowledge either.   Somewhere I read that when Chairman Mao attempted to remove the emotions  and feelings from Classical Chinese Medicine, he created Traditional Chinese Medicine, TCM, which although similar, is not the same as the complete CCM system of healing.

 

Most people do not seem to research and to understand that you cannot always compare one medical system to another easily because the reference points are philosophically different.  There can always be similarities in the result of a diagnosis, but not usually in a healing modality.  You see, it is not a contest or conflict, but rather a differing opinion that needs to be studied to come up with the best healing solution for each patient each time.

 

Like so many other intelligent solutions for any problem we need both systems to advise, help and to teach us how to balance ourselves emotionally as well as physically to heal ourselves.  For millions of years archaeologists have proved to us that mankind had discovered natural remedies to help them reduce their pain, discomfort, suffering and to heal themselves to improve the quality of their lives.

 

So, with that said, why discuss this topic anymore?  Because every solution we know of appears to most people to be created outside of themselves.  We talk about our problems, aches, and pains and even our healing as if it were someone else’s responsibility, which we all know deep inside is not true at all.  In life, our responsibility is to establish a goal and to follow through on a given solution to be fulfilled and to stay mentally and physically healthy. During the study of the Art of Taiji we learn that the ending of one method or movement is the beginning of another ad infinitum.

 

I teach my students that they will work hard to learn how to relax.  This usually receives a few smiles because they always knew or felt deep inside that there was another way to reach their healthful destination; and there is…  To learn to relax ones’ mind and body, to acknowledge every joint, bone, muscle, and organ in their body and to study how one relates to the whole being is the study of the Art of Taiji.  Just to acknowledge the value of Yin & Yang must be clear, to understand that rarely is any movement or weight shift made like an on/off switch, but always like a dimmer switch so that the feeling and energy you generated is not lost in the ethers.

 

I have written many articles about my journey to begin to research healing myself and then to also help others too.  The journey and knowledge come from an understanding of the power of both accepting my responsibility to myself and others and culling the best knowledge I can from those pioneers that developed this insight into any system of healing many years ago.  Every culture through recorded time has developed its method of healing that are not so different than what is being prescribed medically today. Look at Herbology, the American Indian’s methods of healing in harmony with Nature, the Taoists designed their simplified Meridian system to heal naturally.  There never seems to be a class where a student does not ask for relief of a current malady or injury or question or clarification of a movement done internally versus externally.

 

So, I have embarked on a lifelong journey of study to heal utilizing both the creation and movement of energy in my Taiji as well as the energy acupressure points that provide relief for many common ailments the Western alternative only has medications maybe to resolve?

 

I repeat over and over to anyone that will consider this fact, that The Art of Taiji is not the movements so coveted by many Tai Chi practitioners all over the World, but rather the space between the movements that create channels for the healing energy that you create during your research and practice of Classical Taiji.

​

Yours in Martial Spirit  Shifu Robert

Looking for Something?

 

It is sometimes inconceivable that we can go through life never finding the one thing we cherish most.  In fact, when we look back on the many attempts to find this, we are often amazing at what we thought we wanted, or needed, or wished for.  So, this story must begin at the beginning.  The beginning of what, you may ask.  Life, awareness, discovery, or shame, because all these things come into play as we attempt to define what it is that we have been looking for all our lives.  And since we are alive and well enough to write or read this, are we also meant to continue this search until we can no longer dream, or wish, or breathe?  Can we, will we, ever fulfill our dreams, our desires, or our karma?

In the beginning of our lives, we asked ourselves different questions.  We asked for simple solutions to simple problems.  Our parents seemingly had all the correct answers to the issues that tormented and disturbed us.  Did they really?  As time went on, we realized that some of their wisdom was inherited, some studied by example, but most was a furthering of the same analysis and response that their parents taught them either overtly or not.

When we look back on history, we realize that nothing has changed over the years.  Inventions from five thousand years ago have just been rediscovered in the last 500-years and a new group of life’s students take credit for their latest views of the world we share in through their eyes and inventions, but what about the real personal issues that plague all of us in one form or another?

According to all I have encountered in my lifetime, all civilizations have struggled with right and wrong, a sort of moral code, and their emotions.  There have been arguments over the years and discourses written in countless pages of thoughts, like this one, that query and struggle with the simple answer we all searched for since the beginning of our collective memories.

Is it that the world as we know it is truly disharmonious and waiting for us to accept this fact, or is our fate in the hands of the dreamers that still believe that life on earth can still be harmonious?  I believe that we would need to dissect this thought in an attempt, to analyze truth from fiction.  Can we?  If all opinions are subjective than how can we ever get a true answer to this question?  Maybe just and interesting argument or differing opinion may ensue.

When you were a child, did not you search for warmth and comfort from your family?  No? I understand, not from your brother or sister, but from your mother and father?  No?  What were you searching for then?  What are you searching for now?  It is simple.  Acceptance that who we were and that who we are, at every step of our lives is acknowledged and appreciated by someone we want to care about us.  Simple?  Then why is it so hard to receive and to give this simple necessity of mankind back to someone, someone we care about?

How is it that this journey continuously takes back roads and extends itself infinitesimally not always finding the desired result?  I ask my Taiji students all the time, “did you see the movement, or did you see the result of the movement?”  As I said earlier, if all thought is subjective than how can we ever be sure that we are traveling in the correct direction?  How can we be sure that we have not passed by what we were really searching for all along?  The answer is that you cannot know this until the time is right for you to know this.  Now that seems like a silly thought, but one thing we learn is that “Solutions are not always black and white.  There are merits to each side,  In one you may see the light - That the other does not hide.”  Timing also plays a key role in this discourse as some may find that they were born too early, and others too late, but what ever this reality is for each of us, we must learn to play with the hand that was dealt to us.  The expression “if only” does not work here in this analysis because we must really try hard to accept this current reality.  We can try to change this even in the privacy of our mind’s eye, but in truth, we cannot change this truism.  So, where do we go from here? 

In my past, at that time, I did not see the choices I am now bombarded with.  Maybe you did, but I did not.  To me all of life was simple and the decisions almost preordained in their simplicity and straightforwardness.  I think now about all the colloquial expressions that I heard, and studied, and listened to, but did not heed.  I think about how I was invincible and that I could change the entire history of mankind in my thoughts and in my deeds.  And I still can…

At some point in our childhood, we recognize that there are things that we want that we cannot have.  Why?   Sometimes we cannot know the reasons that we cannot have what, or who, we desire, so we just continue and rationalize our decisions and mull over our fate.  I think at this point in our lives two  important choices are made that affect the remainder of our life here on earth.  Firstly, we can choose to resign ourselves to the way things are and accept this as our reality and secondly, we can choose to always believe that these circumstances are temporary and that things will change, and things will improve.  Each is a coping mechanism that transports us to a safer plateau in times of need and in crisis.  This sanctuary found in our hearts and our soul needs to be removed from the chaos and indecision of the world around us.  This is a safe place where we can be who we are as we try to figure that out every situation where we are not quite sure what to do.

 

Yours in Martial Spirit    Shifu Robert    12-26-07       

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