Many of the writers in my Tai ChiReading List discuss attending to one’s feelings during practice of all kinds – solo, partner etc. They’re no longer around to ask, but it’s my impression that when the old Masters talk about “feelings,” they mean “Sensations,” “Impressions” and “Emotions” all at the same time, without distinction.
The distinctions and the connections between them are important to bear in mind, and they all relate to the “self-audit” I’ve been going on about recently. Paying attention to “feelings” in this multi-faceted way is important both for the “civil” and “martial” aspects of the art, and lead to the internal and external “balance” which is the ultimate goal of tai chi.
I should probably explain, since that last sentence sounds uncharacteristically airy-fairy for me. In the spirit of tai chi training generally, we'll be going from “external to internal” in this exploration, from the things that are outside of us to the things that are so much a part of us that we can't tell where we end and they begin.
We start with the “sensation” aspect of feelings. This has to do with everything our senses tell us – from the temperature and conditions of wherever we happen to be, inward to how our clothes and shoes feel, how our partner physically feels when we’re doing push-hands, and even further inward to how our qi feels as we express the several energies emphasized in the form. We have an excellent opportunity to scrutinize these sensations when we’re doing the form and in partner work, but there’s nothing at all saying we can’t do this throughout our day; in fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s especially important to do this “outside the classroom!”
Next is our “impressions.” Again going
from external to internal, examples include:
o the apparent state of mind of
the person we’re interacting with
o the effect our movement has on
our own centeredness, rootedness and balance,
o the interaction we’re having
with the surface we’re standing on, be it floor, concrete, grass, gravel, flat,
sloped etc.
Whereas the "sensations" are straightforward - simply a matter of observation - "impressions" involve as much discerning as they do perceiving. In this aspect, we don't merely notice the impressions, we also figure out what to make of them and how to respond to them; whether we should interact, take advantage of, embrace, neutralize, "just keep an eye on," ignore and so on.
Finally, our own emotions.
Before we go further, I think it’s important to lay a bit of groundwork. The first thing I want to emphasize, and this is critical, is that we don’t immediately pass judgment on whatever emotions we’re feeling. This holds true for when we’re in class as well as every other time. I just read a passage that resonated with me, related to our emotions, and speaks to this business of being forgiving with ourselves while simultaneously evaluating how we feel and why we feel as we do:
"Your mind is a machine that makes emotions. You can inspect those emotions for quality assurance."
I’m not giving away any State Secrets when I say that I know there are times when we would prefer doing something other than coming to class, yet we do. There are days that are difficult; we face challenges at home, at work and throughout our lives that we never talk about, yet we bring them to class with us. I hope our class is a welcome respite from the stresses of the day, and I try to keep it thus. But there’s no denying that if our boss was unreasonable, our partner demanding, our creditors hounding and our car is “acting up,” we sometimes come to class with an “unclear mind.” That’s just life.
Even in class, it’s sometimes challenging to just be content and receptive. Sometimes I don’t explain myself well, and the concept is difficult to grasp, but we don’t feel comfortable stopping the class and saying “Hey, could you clarify what you meant when you said such-and-such?” Or we feel like we’re not “getting” a posture/transition for whatever reason. Or we find working with this-or-that partner difficult or even unpleasant.
Many of us can confirm this last feeling. When we went to a seminar a few years ago, one of the other students was a fellow who was, to put it bluntly, a pain in the ass to work with. He was more of a grappler than a tai chi player, and often put the person he was working with into painful positions. He had a different approach to tai chi; and while I won’t say it was outright wrong, it certainly was uncommon – tai chi players tend to try to avoid making their partners wince and grimace in pain. We all agreed he was a prick, and this affected how we interacted with him. I'd be lying if I told you I didn't hope I'd run into him again at a future seminar – something I don't say to my credit.
It's valuable to take a moment, as we’re going through our form work in class and at home, to examine how our emotions – those we bring into class and those we discover as we practice – affect what we’re doing. It sometimes takes considerable effort to do this. We might discover bewilderment, frustration, maybe even dread (i.e. when we’re about to do a posture/transition we’re unfamiliar with or that might be painful); we might feel intimidated by a partner or by a concept. We might feel uncomfortable with an application (“Wait – the hands in “High Pat on Horse” are doing WHAT?!”) and so on.
There’s no right-or-wrong answer as to what to do with those emotions when you discover they’re there. I won’t tell you that it’s incorrect to feel intimidated, or frustrated, or confused. That’s not how emotions work. What I will tell you is what I do.
When I find I’m “feelin’ a certain kinda way,” I acknowledge it. If I’m practicing at home, I’ll often stop and try to puzzle out why, then see if I can map out how I can get to “what I’m feeling now” to “what I want to feel.” In class, I can’t do this, so the “processing” gets compressed a bit. Sometimes it’s just fleeting and undifferentiated; in which case I just acknowledge it & let it pass, kind of like I acknowledge my irritation with a jerk driver on the road.
But sometimes I'm stuck in traffic with the "jerk driver." And in like manner, sometimes the emotions I'm dealing with in class are persistent and risk becoming a distraction. At those times, I try to let the feeling accompany me. This is very similar to the Buddhist practice of “inviting Mara to tea.” I let the unpleasant or distracting emotion stay with me as I work through the form. In this way, I get into the habit of recognizing that “I'm not this emotion – I’m the one who sees it.”
Sometimes this is easier said than done. But it does get easier the more I do it.
It’s usually the case that the distracting emotion, much like the chattering “monkey mind,” gets bored and goes away. Of course it’s not a being with its own volition – it’s a metaphor. But it’s uncanny how, treating it as such, it behaves as such when we don’t give it what it wants. It wants us to engage with it, give it all our attention and do whatever it is that it’s used to seeing us do when we’re consumed by it. But when we simply acknowledge it and let it travel with us while we do whatever it is we really want to do, it presently gives up and goes off wherever bored emotions go to. It’s a trick, but an effective one, and the Buddhists have been using it for a long time. There’s much we can learn from them.
Tai chi considers all these feelings – sensations, impressions and emotions – as something worthy of study and worthy of integrating into our practice. It’s a “next-level” practice, appropriate for when we’re comfortable with the form and how to do it. The benefits are obvious and straightforward – enhanced awareness, better “presence in the moment,” clearer thinking, the increased ability to self-audit and self-regulate, and so on.
