I was doing push hands in my Tai Chi class tonight, I’m starting to understand what they mean when they say you can get in your own way. Slavish adherence to the form and the idea of a set of rules tends to get you pushed over.

It reminds me of a couple of quotes, first it Bruce Lee “The man who is really serious, with the urge to find out what truth is, has no style at all. He lives only in what is.”, the other is an old Zen quote “If you meet the Buddha on the path, kill him”. It’s gotten me thinking, can slavish adherence to the Buddhist scriptures in fact get in the way or progress?

We all know the old line about the flexible reed bending in the wind but the tree breaking, I think this is something we need to be reminded of from time to time in our practice. We need to move beyond orthodoxy in order to really fulfill ourselves as spiritual seekers, I know there are many paths that claim to have all the answers, I don’t think that that claim can be made and the claimant expect to keep any real credibility.

I personally think that the best attitude is the one my Tai Chi teacher takes, that he too, for all his very considerable prowess, is still a student.

I wrote some time ago about my views of striving and grasping for things.

Those views were helped along by a few things, I’d been encouraged to push harder in the gym only to be met with pain and injury. I’d witnessed workplace politics handled in a way I completely disagreed with, this has happened more than once across a number of companies. I also found myself questioning with our national work ethic, is this the right way?

I asked myself a question, “Am I mad, or is there a better way?” In the gym I reminded myself of the 70% rule of moderation. It’s a great little rule I learned from Tai Chi, you only work at 70% of your max; energy and attention are kept back for working on a gradual improvement in your performance, also to make sure you don’t burn out on the way, it’s a long term game plan, but it offers greater potential than flogging yourself to death. I’m working at less than my max now, focusing on technique, I don’t doubt I’ll get back to the weights and performance I had, but when I do it’ll be with much better technique, I’ll be able to handle it much better than I did.

As far as the whole work thing goes, I find myself with less invested in the long hours culture we have here in the UK, as a result I don’t do overtime anymore unless it’s an emergency. Again, this comes back to moderation; whatever some might like to think, we don’t live to work.

I’ve seen the results of office politics and crackdowns on more than once occasion and in more than one company, striving for more results, more controls, a greater bottom line. I’ve seen it reach a point that employee goodwill was lost, people refused to work overtime, wouldn’t go out of their way for their employer; the workplace spirit was lost.

This is a way echoes comments in my previous post, crackdowns and tightening up have their place, but if you take it too far it hurts far more than it helps, you can wind up flogging the horse to death if you’re not careful.

This comes back to moderation, the middle way. Yes, you can keep driving people harder towards business goals, “Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes”, but in the end the human cost will be huge.  We already see this, lots of stress and work-life imbalances and not just in the UK, sooner or later we must settle into a steady state, not the greed driven relentless drive for better growth; for the sake of our own collective health and sanity.

I think that this excerpt from chapter 23 of the Tao Te Ching sums up my thoughts on this:

Sparse speech is natural
Thus strong wind does not last all morning
Sudden rain does not last all day
What makes this so? Heaven and Earth
Even Heaven and Earth cannot make it last
How can humans?

Last weekend, I was fortunate enough to be invited on my Tai Chi clubs’ annual retreat to a place called Unstone Grange. The itinerary varies from year to year, but includes plenty of Tajiquan, some meditation and some drinking. A recipe for a good weekend!

Unstone Grange is a country house set in the beautiful Derbyshire countryside. It’s owned by a charity who maintain it and run it for organisations and clubs to hold retreats, though there have been weddings here as well. Below, you can see the view from the drive, followed by the view from the side of the house. You can see the attic dorm I was in, in the first photo, it’s the one on the left hand side.

As I hinted earlier, we slept in single sex dormitories, which are located on and above the first floor, I was located up in the attic.

The break was just what I needed, just when I needed it, Unstone Grange is an amazingly peaceful place. It’s an amazing experience for townie like myself to do outdoor Tai Chi practise surrounded by rolling countryside instead of houses. Doing some early morning Chi Kung in the clear country air was a fantastic way to start the day!

Unstone Grange has it’s own gardens where they grow their own organic herbs and vegetables, they also run courses on organic gardening. The Deer Tribe have their own area as well, you can see the TeePees in the lower photo below.

In addition, it was good to get the chance to talk about eastern philosophy and Zen Buddhism, the Zen guys in the group gave themselves away as soon as the guided meditation started!

Finally, I got the chance to experience a Reiki healing courtesy of a friend in Kaiming. I was privately a little sceptical, but it did the trick, and I was able to feel the flow of Qi into some of the worst hit areas of my head and neck. For someone who has always kept a sceptical view of such things, it was an eye opener.

Needless to say, I’ll be going back next year!

I was at my Tai Chi class on Wednesday night, the exercise was a simple push, but Mark was making the point that you should only use “4oz” of pressure. Now this isn’t a literal commandment, but the principle is not to apply force.

While we were doing this, I thought of the Taoist metaphor of water. Our hands were like the tips of the waves, gentle, but with hidden power behind them. The power came from the depths, from our feet, our weight and then came crashing down when it was released (obviously not so much in the case of some of the students) with great effect.

This is great for Tai Chi, but I was just thinking that this goes much deeper than Martial Arts, it’s a useful metaphor for all of life. You stay connected to things and situations, not by crushing pressure, but gentle contact. When the situation moves, as you’re not trying to rigidly control, you can flow with it better.

But your motivation is not in your hands, the superficial contact with things, it should come from a deeper connection from developing an understanding that can only come from not trying to control or exert ego. I feel that when you move from that place, you add much more quality to what you do and things should go more smoothly. I’d like to develop this line of thought further, watch this space.

Well, after a long absence I started back at my Tai Chi class last night.

It’s interesting to contrast Taijiquan and my usual Bodypump classes, as I do view them as different sides of the Taji symbol. I used to consider the internal exercise superior, an attitude that I picked up from an ex-colleague, I’ve reconsidered my approach these days.

While I appreciate the external exercise I get in the Gym, I found Tajiquan provides a missing part of the exercise picture, I appreciate that more now that I’m doing both than I did when I was just doing Tai Chi or Gym classes by themselves.

I have a feeling that the two are going to compliment each other quite nicely, does anyone else have any experience with this?