Tai Chi and Men

As a followup to yesterday's post on tai chi and women, I thought I would address some of the particular challenges facing men as they approach learning tai chi.

Although tai chi practice is, generally speaking, harder on women from an emotional perspective, men face a number of physical challenges in performing tai chi correctly.

Stories of male tai chi masters, like this article from Paradigm Publications, on "The Old Men of T'ai Chi," often emphasize the mystery and paradox of becoming a male tai chi practitioner in the way they describe the bodies of the masters. Of Professor Huo, a tai chi master, the author writes,

He was soft and gentle, yet something about his body gave the appearance of being carved from stone. 

Of another master, the "Dragon of Morse Avenue Park," the author writes,

I saw an old Chinese man with a cane and a straw hat approaching. He looked very frail and the hair in his nostrils and his two front teeth gave the appearance of an old dragon that had lost his fire. I wondered how this could possibly be a T'ai Chi Master. This old man looked as if he had trouble standing and I was sure that if the wind came in too briskly off Lake Michigan, he'd be blown across the park. 

Later, the writer gets the chance to practice tai chi alongside this man:

I stood behind him, knowing we were to begin doing the form. As he prepared, this frail old man began to expand and as he expanded he got straighter and straighter and smiled more and more. Everything about him brightened, and then he began to move. To this day I have never seen anyone move as smoothly, softly, or beautifully. This old man moved as if he had no bones. 

...

After we finished the form, he laughed and beckoned me to do "push hands" with him. Now, push hands is a T'ai Chi exercise usually done with two people. I was amazed. His skin was as soft as a baby's, his muscles were completely relaxed and his fingertips glowed fire-red and his eyes glimmered. We touched hands. I felt something I had never experienced before, no bones.... He seemed to disappear from my touch. All of a sudden, in the midst of a very slow circling movement, I lost my balance and was lifted up slightly off the ground. As I went back, I thought I'd try and see if I could get the old man. I didn't. To this day, I never have.  

I'll let you read the rest of that story yourself, so you can see how it turns out. It's interesting!

One way to think of this strength-with-no-bones is to think of a cat. Most cats have an amazing amount of flexibility. If you pick one up, he might feel a little bit like a large, furry noodle in your hands. But when it comes time to fight, cats can strike incredibly hard. There is a lot of power behind those little paws!

So, how to do you go from being Joe Regular to developing no-bones softness and chi power?

It isn't easy. My point here is that men beginning their tai chi practice have a lot of bodily habits to change, discard, and consider. Most men, even if they are not actively training their muscles through activities like weight lifting, carry a lot of tension in their muscles. Almost inevitably, this muscular tension reflects inner tension.

When it comes to performing the movements of tai chi, men often try to "muscle through" techniques at first. While both men and women can have trouble grasping the idea of using the natural structures of the body rather than muscular strength to perform movements, I find that men often struggle more with relaxing the muscles. This is especially true when learning how to apply movements. When presented with resistance, men are more likely to resort to hard muscular tension than to rely on correctly performing the move to get them through.

Tai chi can also give men trouble in the area of flexibility. Many of the movements of tai chi require quite a large degree of flexibility in the hips and pelvis.

While some movements like snake creeps low and the deep sitting (what we call horse stance) very obviously require flexibility, it might surprise you to know that each and every movement of the tai chi set involves a similar opening of the pelvic floor, turning and opening of the hip joints, and dropping in the low spine. For most men, because of the conformation of the pelvis and the relatively tight nature of the tendons and muscles, especially in this area, building this kind of flexibility is much more challenging than it is for most women.

At the same time, stretching and opening the pelvic floor and hips is of the utmost importance for men's health, and will help protect prostate, reproductive, and urinary tract health by increasing circulation throughout the pelvis.

The key to this aspect of practice is understanding how to stretch and open these areas without straining, and how to release tension through movement rather than create it. Once you understand how to begin the opening and stretching process, diligent practice will help enormously in helping you create a softer, yet stronger and healthier body, at the same time as you learn to release stress as it arises. Unfortunately there is no short cut through the hard work you'll have to do to achieve softness and flexibility, but the more you practice, the better and better you'll feel.

Tai Chi and Women

Like just about every other male-established institution in the west, the martial arts world has yet to decide whether it's totally comfortable with women participants. Of course, individual schools and teachers vary widely in terms of how accepting they are of women students, how willing they are to train them, how far they'll allow them to go, and whether they'll train them equally alongside male students.

I know this topic is a bit of a can of worms. For every woman who has suspected that her male sparring partners go too easy on her, there's another who suspects that she's getting put through the ringer a little extra hard. For every woman who is treated like a freak because she likes to fight, or wants to train, or desires, more than anything else, to experience the profound depths of meditation, there's another who is given nothing but respect for these pursuits. There might be a few of you, men and women alike, reading this and thinking, "Wait a second - isn't feminism over? Didn't we already go through this? Of course men and women can both do martial arts." More than likely there are a bunch of you also thinking, "But women just aren't as strong as men. They can't fight as hard or train as hard. Full stop."

Because I train in tai chi, where the main rule of sparring is, the softer you are, the better you fight, you would think that women would dominate the field. And it is true that if you go into any tai chi class in North America, you'll probably see many more women students than you will men. Because most women don't have the same upper body strength as men, are more open in the hips and pelvis, and have softer muscles in general, you would think we would be naturals when it comes to tai chi, which requires you to use the naturally strong structures of your musculo-skeletal system to apply techniques, rather than using sheer muscle power.

Even so, in the group I train in, even though women far outnumber men in the class as a whole, if you look at people who have achieved an advanced level of training, men are very well represented. Our group has also seen quite a few women who were on the path to excellence suddenly drop out, or choose to step back their training, or decide to switch to a less intense class with less knowledgeable instructors.

But I'm not the first one to notice this phenomenon. Chris M. at the awesomely comprehensive, hilarious, and amazing Martial Development, asks the question, "Why Are Female Martial Arts Masters So Rare?" He observes:

I have attended classes where men outnumber women 10-to-1, and I have attended classes where women outnumber men; in both environments, the average female student seemed to absorb and master new material faster than the average male.

But he later notes:

Despite all this, the male gender holds a trump card: willingness to expend overwhelming effort towards mastery of an impractical skill. Am I right, ladies and gentlemen?

This is a good question, and I suppose there's some truth to his proposed solution to this conundrum. There are a lot of other factors that could be at play here.

Privilege is the most obvious one. Omnia vanitas, one of the commentators on Chris's post, pretty much nails this point to the wall, and I couldn't say it any better:

I just want to say that the reason there are so few female martial arts masters is the same reason there are so few black philosophers or politicians. Bigotry. A history of bigotry. Women under the oppressive conditions of male supremacist patriarchy are valued more for their sex appeal–for how they can please men–than for who they are as a human being or for their skills. It’s total bullshit, but there you have it. If you don’t believe me, go ahead, google “female ninja” and see what images come up. Or go to youtube and search “amazing female athletes.” It’s propaganda and it’s time it stopped.

Word.

There's another reason why women can hit a wall, especially with a soft martial art like tai chi, beyond institutionalized sexism and its ravages. It has to do with the energy composition of men and women, and what happens when you begin to work on projecting energy from the inside out, especially if you're working with yang energy.

Men and women are composed differently on an energetic level. While both genders (like every single object in the material world) contain yin and yang energy, men carry their yang energy on the outside, while their yin energy is on the inside. Women are the opposite: yin on the outside, yang on the inside.

Women are like a steel rod inside a pillow; men are like marshmallow in a steel drum.

What this means is that when it comes to certain techniques, like learning how to apply an effective strike with yang energy, women have to move the energy from the inside out. You know what you tend to hide on the deepest innermost levels of your being: the dirtiest secrets, the nastiest memories, and the deepest, most profound shame and self-doubt. These stale, stagnant emotional energies are inevitably intertwined with the yang energy you're trying to conjure in order to perform techniques. To advance in tai chi, you have to confront all this crap.

Every single woman I know, including myself, who has trained intensively in tai chi, has hit an emotional wall. For a lot of us, that wall meant anxiety symptoms, profound emotional upset, panic attacks, and generalized horrible feelings every time we practiced.

How did we get through it? Sheer perseverance. I cried it out, and then kept practicing. Other women who I've taught or who were learning alongside me and my peers had the benefit of knowing those of us who had hit the wall and gotten through it.

Once you're on the other side, you've faced your demons and sent them packing. You're on much more stable ground, and you know you can move forward. That's when you can really begin to kick major boot. Getting to the other side is a matter of being gentle with yourself and knowing it will pass.

So, for those women out there who are contemplating quitting tai chi because you're hitting the wall, or you're wondering about why so few women in your class truly excel, or you want to know what the tai chi path holds for you, I say:

Keep going. Keep training. Be soft, be focused, and push through. Whatever comes up that's negative, project through it, and let it go. The wonderful thing about tai chi is that it's not therapy: you don't have to comb through every negative emotion in order to get rid of it. You can just allow it to pass through.

What lies on the other side is so, so good.

To any male instructors or students who are watching female students or peers slip away: remember that, while tai chi may be much harder for men in terms of developing flexibility and performing techniques correctly, generally speaking it is harder on women emotionally. Understand where your female students or peers are coming from, and respect that their journey may be different from yours. If you let them train, and help them continue to move through the angst, you'll be gaining powerful allies as you walk the path together.

The Tai Chi Learning Spiral

In our tai chi classes (as, I would imagine, in many others), we don't talk about a learning curve: we talk about a learning spiral. I wanted to dedicate a blog post to discussing why that is, and what it has to do with beginning to walk on the tai chi path.

Many people who begin learning tai chi think that they are working toward a goal. In the beginning, it can feel that way: you want to learn the tai chi set, or perhaps you're working toward memorizing it. Maybe you want to feel more confident with the basic stepping. Or you're aiming to achieve the smoothness you've seen when other students practice.

As you train, your instructor might talk about a few different concepts: pushing from the feet; turning rather than performing lateral movements; moving the entire body as a single unit; staying relaxed at all times.

But you've got a goal to meet: you've got the tai chi set to learn. So you kind of hear what's being said, and you sort of take it in, or you think you're doing it.

Fast forward to a little while later. You pretty much know the set, and you can practice it on your own. Now what? One day, your instructor tells you to push from your back foot and gives you a little resistance as you move forward. If you want her to get out of your way, you're going to have to really use that back foot. You do it. You get that when she says push from the feet, she means really push from the feet.

You're on the tai chi spiral. As you learn, you will hear the same concepts again and again, but each time, the concept will have a deeper meaning for you because of the skills you’ve spent time building.

The next time you encounter "push from the feet," it might be part of a lesson in softness, or as part of push hands. You'll learn that you can push and relax your muscles at the same time. You'll learn that pushing effectively allows you to take your arm muscles out of the equation and perform a connected, effective technique.

In between these revelations, you'll hear the phrase "push from the feet" hundreds of times. But when the phrase really pops for you, that's when you're really learning.

There is no end to the depth of each tai chi concept. Push from the feet has a superficial meaning, but can also be completely profound.

If you're familiar with western forms of exercise, this concept will probably seem a little strange. You can become a better and better runner, for example, but once you've accomplished good technique, running up the same hill each morning is going to pretty much challenge your heart, lungs and legs in the same way.

Tai chi is different. As you train, your body and mind open up in new, very deep, ways. A tai chi set in Year One is not equal to a tai chi set in Year Four. That Year Fifteen tai chi set is many times more challenging than the Year One set - because you are able to do more, you can go deeper, open inside further, and use your energy much more profoundly. Returning to the same concepts is a little like returning over and over to visit old friends - except the friends are getting smarter, wittier, and better dressed as the years pass.

That's the tai chi spiral.

Tai Chi and Spiritual Guidance, or: Tai Chi Teachings from Beyond the Pale

In "The Tai Chi Book: Refining and Enjoying a Lifetime of Practice," Robert Chuckrow, physics PhD and tai chi practitioner since 1970, has this fascinating point to make about tai chi teachers and where they might come from:

It is possible to learn from a teacher whose identity is completely unknown to the student. This may sound unbelievable, so prepare yourself for something strange. The teacher may be a consciousness that may or may not even reside in a living body. The teacher may have died and not yet have been reborn. Or, the teacher may at present be a child who, in a past life, attained some sort of mastery. It may be that the teacher had a strong connection with the student but passed on. Or, the teacher may have had no connection in this life, but, rather, in past lives. Or, the connection may even be much less fathomable. The student may not even be consciously aware of being taught through "spirit." Such an awareness, however, can make the process more efficient. If the instruction is coming, for example, through dreams (as mine most often does), the student can do various things to increase the likelihood that contact will be made and that what is received is consciously retained upon awakening. Future contacts can be initiated by consciously desiring the contact to be made. Retention can be increased by an awareness that an important process is taking place. The knowledge that you are being helped in spirit adds an extra keenness to your receptivity.

~Robert Chuckrow, The Tai Chi Book, page 109

The idea that non-corporeal teachers were involved in my practice was floating around (har har) in the club I trained in long before I had any direct conscious awareness that I was personally receiving such guidance. And when that guidance manifested, it was really only as the barest of whispers.

I remember training up at my family cottage, in the part of Ontario just west of Algonquin park. I had my weapons, a water bottle, and time to spend all afternoon working out. One of my favourite things to do when I'm all on my own is to go through each of the sets I know one by one, usually in this order: tai chi, lok hup, hsing-i, sword, sabre. I was warming up and thinking about where I would start, and all of a sudden, I felt a strong impulse to pick up the sabre first.

"Practice your turning," a thought came through - by which I understood I should work on the spiral turn of the spine. Not "Hey, I should work on turning the spine," or, "It would be cool to practice turning my spine."

This was much more like a directive.

I silently thanked the source of the thought, thinking without fully believing that it didn't come from me, and I proceeded to practice.

Now, whenever I get the chance to do a lot of solo practice, I always start with the sabre.

I don't recommend relying exclusively on a non-corporeal teacher to learn tai chi. (Almost) everybody needs a physical, visceral human teacher to help connect with this practice. But I do believe that when we pick up a tai chi sword, or we start to learn tai chi stepping, or we practice any of the Taoist arts, a chorus of non-corporeal beings, from teachers who have passed out of the physical world to dragons to guardians, stands by ready to help us.

Tai Chi, Qigong and the Paranormal

There is something about tai chi training that people don't discuss very much, but that is a part of walking the tai chi / qigong / meditation path. Call it psychic ability, the paranormal, tuning in to energy, or whatever you want. If you do a lot of tai chi and qigong meditation, sooner or later, you'll start to see and feel...things. This can be a fascinating experience, and it will probably develop alongside your self-defense and qi skills, so there is nothing to fear.

What kinds of things?

Well, a lot of people begin by seeing auras, or the electromagnetic field that surrounds all living things. I remember years ago doing sitting meditation. I sat behind one of my friends, and as I settled into my meditation focus, a bright red layer appeared all around her head and shoulders. I knew that red typically means a heightened emotional state - it can signify that the person is angry, or that she is feeling especially lusty. I assumed it was the former situation - we were in class, after all. When I spoke to her after meditation, she told me all about the terrible day she'd had, and how frustrated and angry she was at something outrageous that had happened.

It was one of my first clear moments of knowing I'd really seen something significant.

Chances are, when you first start to see auras, you'll see them as a faint pale gold glow around people. It's easy to dismiss this as an effect of lighting or tired eyes. Just bear in mind that we are trained, especially in Western culture, to dismiss anything that isn't 100 percent verifiable by science. The more you sink into your tai chi and qigong training, the more you'll notice that not everything is what it seems. It can be a bit of a disconcerting experience, especially if you're accustomed to embracing our culture's habit of skepticism.

One of the things that happens to us as we train is that we begin to become aware of how we are affected - physically, mentally and emotionally - by our activities, by the food that we eat, by the people we spend time with, and by our surroundings. Because we develop a habit of tuning in to our physical sensations and our thoughts, we take notice when something seems intrusive or out of place.

A lot of my students experience this awakening as a sudden sensitivity to other people. As energy beings, humans toss around a lot of loose qi, usually when we're feeling strong emotions. We throw anger; we project disapproval; we send love. Once you've learned how qi feels, you can walk into a room and get an instant impression of the emotional and energetic temperature of the people there. If someone who hates you is sitting in the office you just entered, you might feel their emotional presence as a drop in the pit of your stomach. That's your qi reacting to theirs.

Back when I was doing my PhD and I taught undergrad classes, I always hated the days when I had to hand back essays. The classroom was often ripe with the students' nervousness, and I felt their fear of doing badly hit me like a wave.

One of the things tai chi can teach us is how to manage such scenarios so that we aren't quite as vulnerable to the emotional projections of others.

Another key aspect of tai chi and qigong is a sensitivity to non-corporeal energy beings that surround us. On a fundamental level, our world is composed of such energies. Not all of the sentient and mobile energies out there have physical form like we do. If you're out in the woods, and you see what look like multi-coloured or golden sparks, don't worry: your retinas probably aren't tearing (as I thought mine were the first few times I saw this phenomena). You're seeing elementals, rudimentary energies. You can feel these energies at times, too. While meditating a couple of months ago, I felt a large, sinuous form pass by me where I was sitting on the floor. A while later, a white, translucent, smiling face floated in front of me. I'd been visited by a dragon - one of the guardians of our practice.

While seeing these things doesn't make you a better tai chi practitioner, it does highlight the fact that there is layer upon layer of reality that is unacknowledged by our materialistic culture. Being able to see such things doesn't make you crazy. It's just a part of taking a deeper look at your world. One of my favourite things about walking the tai chi path is watching the world unfold before me, in ways that are constantly surprising, new and unexpected.

Masters who learn to tame their minds and emotions, and who build an intimate relationship with qi, can also use their energy for self defense. YouTube is full of videos that include demonstrations of qi manipulation, often followed by cries that they are "fake." While it's true that a lot of these videos are the qi master equivalent of professional wrestling, some offer wonderful insight into how qi manipulation works. This demonstration by Venerable Lama Dondrup Dorje of the Pathgate Institute of Buddhist Studies both shows and discusses the use of your qi bubble. While the demonstrations might look fake, the Lama's assistants are reacting to the way he is using his qi field. Enjoy.

Tai Chi as Meditation

These days, calling tai chi "moving meditation" is pretty much a cliché. If you've never tried tai chi, or you've learned from an instructor who hasn't gone beyond the superficial levels of tai chi, you might be wondering how moving slowly and stretching your body translates into meditation.

My experience with tai chi is that the meditation part of the exercise - uh, like the exercise part of the exercise - takes time to develop, and tends to go in stages. 

At first, when you're learning tai chi, it's a matter of getting your limbs to go in the right place. There is something about beginning tai chi practice that can take a perfectly well coordinated individual and turn him into a crazy, limbs-akimbo mess. Flailing through your first beginners lessons is common - and it's also the beginning of meditation, believe it or not. Your mind is so focused on not falling down, and maybe even on cursing yourself out for not getting it right away, it's impossible to focus on anything else! You've forgotten the argument you had with the person of your affections. You've forgotten the dry cleaning you're supposed to pick up after class. Gone are the worries about whether you look fat in your workout outfit. You've got bigger things to worry about now. At least you're worrying about whether you'll ever be comfortable doing tai chi instead of the things that normally bug you.

No, this is not true meditation. But in some ways, a change is as good as a rest when it comes to taming monkey mind.

Source: National Geographic Monkey Gallery

Once you do get a bit more comfortable doing tai chi, your mind becomes more focused on achieving certain goals: memorizing the set so you can do it at home; refining your technique; trying to keep the flow going from one movement to the next. Focusing on these tasks can bring you much more peace than wondering if you'll ever "get it" (you never will, by the way, because there's always more to learn). It's still not real meditation, but it should help you to calm and centre yourself.

After a while - for some people, a few months, for others, a few years - you'll start to feel that the tai chi set is part of your muscle memory. You'll learn to sink deeply into each movement, and you'll feel waves moving in and around your body as you work. That's qi - vital life energy that flows all around you and through you. When you first start to feel qi, it can be distracting. But the more you return your body to performing correct technique, and the more you focus your mind on the purpose of each movement, the more it will flow.

You're on your way to doing tai chi meditation.

As you practice, you'll begin to feel a deep calm. It will happen from time to time at first, but the more you can access that inner stillness, the more you'll feel like you're standing at the centre of a hurricane when you do tai chi. That still centre comes from relaxing, focusing the mind, and all that technique you've absorbed as you practiced. The hurricane is one you're creating, and it's your qi that's moving around and through you.

Now you're meditating.

And you aren't just the eye of the storm. You're the storm itself. And that is awesome. That's tai chi meditation.

Tai Chi and Diet

When you do any kind of exercise, it will change your body composition: that much is inevitable. In the long term, tai chi has an incredibly profound effect on your entire body, from the inside out. Your muscles and tendons become softer -- and, paradoxically, stronger. Your bone density will increase. You'll find your emotions are more balanced, and you'll be able to achieve a stronger mental focus. All of these changes are based on moving your body and focusing your mind in entirely new ways. To make the most of your tai chi, it's important to follow a few key dietary principles.

The diet recommendations I'm making here are based on my experience as a tai chi practitioner who works out six times a week, sometimes for three hours at a time. Your mileage may vary. You probably have different body composition and different energy tendencies than I do, so nothing here is absolute. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) practitioners recommend an incredibly wide variety of different foods and cooking styles, depending on your basic disposition and any symptoms you might have. As Victoria Dragon notes in her article on TCM & Diet for Acupuncture.com, one of the beauties of TCM is that it recognizes individuality in everything, including diet.

Needless to say, you shouldn't eat a food to which you are allergic or sensitive. If you think you have a food allergy, go get tested by an allergist.

In TCM, one of the core notions is following what's called a "pure, clear diet." This means natural food. It means whole food. It means that you won't get what you need from a frozen cube of tastelessness that you stick in the microwave each night. My tai chi classmates--the people who I've been training with for years now--have noticed that slowly, their tolerance for any processed foods has dropped way down. If you want to feed your body well, you need to cook.

When you're especially starving after a workout, it's tempting to grab the fastest, easiest source of calories. Back at the club where I first learned tai chi, people routinely ate cheap storebought cookies along with their tea during class breaks. But it's important not to gravitate toward simple sugar. A cookie or piece of cake will only leave you feeling draggy if you eat it after a workout, and over time, sugar stresses your entire energy system and causes spleen qi depletion. Don't deplete your spleen qi!

When I was first practicing, I craved pasta and other carbs after a workout. I would head home after the end of class at 10pm, cook a big pot of noodles, and eat them with some bread. Needless to say this was not the best idea, for my digestion or my energy level.

So what's ideal? As a baseline, you'll want to focus on lean proteins, whole grains, lots and lots of vegetables, and some fruit.

In TCM, eating raw veggies is generally speaking not considered the best idea. Raw veg makes your body work extra hard to digest it. I know there are a lot of raw foodists and general nutritionists out there who think it's a great idea to make your body work harder. If it wants calories, the logic seems to go, it has to slave to get them!

But the TCM approach suggests that the best way to keep your qi levels high is to give your body food that it doesn't have such a hard time with. Lightly steamed veggies are great. In the depths of winter, when it's absolutely freezing out, a hearty, root vegetable-laden stew is terrific for you, and will help you stay warm. When it comes to doing tai chi, which warms you greatly on the inside, a good rule is that warming foods are best.

Whole grains are the foundation of a good diet according to many TCM practitioners. I've been experimenting lately with starting my day with a bowl of porridge of some kind--whether it's brown rice porridge, oatmeal, quinoa, millet, or some other mystery grain, and I've found I have energy to burn and I stay full for hours and hours.

You'll find varying opinions on meat among TCM practitioners, but if you're going to do tai chi intensively, it's best to include some in your diet. I know, I know. A lot of people who are vegetarian are also attracted to activities like tai chi. But as a former vegetarian, I can tell you that it's next door to impossible to do tai chi and stay healthy on a vegetarian diet. Meat protein relaxes and nourishes your muscles and tendons in a way that vegetable protein sources, like beans or tofu, and even eggs and dairy, just can't accomplish. I speak from experience on this: I was vegetarian for 13 years before I started experimenting with adding a little bit of fish or chicken back into my diet, and the difference was incredible.

Generally speaking, you'll find your digestive tract is happier when you drink and eat foods that are room temperature or warmer, especially right after a workout or if you've been spending a lot of time meditating.

Good luck with your tai chi, and happy eating!