In the ordinary experience of reaching a goal, we continuously try harder. We use more effort, straining and tensing toward an accomplishment.

You have to ask yourself sometimes, is it beneficial for you to be straining and tensing this much to succeed in finishing?

Maybe when you recognize that it’s not so useful, you should listen to your body. The tension stops and a door opens to a new world or reality of deeper listening. The more you listen, the more you become aware that you’re in the present moment – feeling, sensing, and knowing in the here and now. 

This leads you from the limitations of the old way of thinking into new dimensions of consciousness. Yet, we keep telling ourselves to push harder, and use more effort and force because we know this to be true. It’s the only way to get results. It’s an old pattern we can’t seem to break. It is what we know.

What can you do to clear the old programming and learn to live in the unknown and be present here and now?

It starts with your breath. And with each breath, you can feel the here and now all at once. 

You can feel it freely and effortlessly. As you open your mind to it, a transformative change is happening. You know that you’re breathing, but you sense it differently. You know that your breath goes through your nose and lungs, but then you start to sense that your breath is also going through your body. That breath continues inside your body to move your internal organs and everything else. This is like two rivers converging and causing a new stream of life that you didn’t know existed before.

This new life grows out of your direct experience and has the power to change everything.

You no longer see yourself as a fixed object bound by living in your body or your world. Instead, your body and your world live in your experience. Tai Chi is a practice that helps you to awaken to your experiences and opens you up to a new world of possibilities.

How does this occur?

With Tai Chi practice, you take it slowly and without effort.  You then simply notice change or movement.

Before, you experience yourself as a solid, relatively fixed object like the “body” or the ground is fixed. Now, your experience will reveal itself as an ever-changing movement within a movement. Each time you do Tai Chi, you fall deeper and deeper into another world. The old way of thinking is that you see yourself function as a relatively fixed object. You also feel you are separate from everything else. You also see that gravity is a force to overcome.

With practice, you get yourself into a new mindset where you function as a self-sensing, self-renewing energy being.  Now you feel you are interconnected with all there is.

You will be able to understand that you can use gravity to sense your patterns of habitual tension, and then free yourself from these faulty patterns. Each time you step in the Tai Chi form, for example, think about how the ground is opening itself to you.

Instead of pressing down firmly on your foot and applying tension on your toes, feel the ground come up to be received by you.  Gravity no longer feels like it is bringing you down.

Let’s practice Tai Chi right now:

1. Let’s start by dropping down. Feel the ground open itself up to you.

2. Step with your left and shift the weight. Turn in, relax. Let go. Feel the ground, open up to you.

3. Then, energize the fingers up. Exhale, relax, and sink back down.

4. Energize the fingers. Relax back down, and exhale all the way.

1. Turn, energize.  One hand faces the other.

2. Shift the weight, step, and feel the ground open up to you. As you receive it, then energize to make the shape.

3. One hand faces the other. Turn, step, exhale and energize.  Ward off.

4. Turn again, shift the weight back, exhale, energize, and roll back.

5. Shift the weight and press.

6. Shift the weight back and open.  Shift the weight forward and push.

7. Exhale, and receive the ground coming up towards you.

8. Shift the weight back and open. Step to sink down, exhale and energize, cross hands. Then relax back down. Exhale all the way, feel the ground open itself up to you and receive it.

What if you can free yourself from the old way of thinking, from your limitations and from your trauma? 

What if you can live with more ease and a sense of aliveness?

What are some other new beliefs to consider in the context of Tai Chi philosophy?

Follow me on Facebook and continue to learn with me what these new beliefs may be.