Tai Chi Benefits Body, Mind and Spirit

Auguste Rodin's "The Thinker"

When thinking about human beings, it is usually a mistake to compartmentalise too much. So for instance, if you were to think that exercise and movement benefits the body, that something like learning a new language benefits the mind, and that, say, meditation or prayer benefits the spirit (whatever that might be...see the blog "Mind, Body and What?"), think again: it’s not quite that simple.

In fact, whilst an expression like ‘mind, body and spirit’ might be useful in emphasising that the totality of a human being is meant, we should not imagine that there are three distinct and separate aspects of that being. This was perhaps the mistake made in the West from the sixteenth century onwards, leading to the “ghost in the machine” model of a human being as a mechanical entity (the body) mysteriously inhabited by a non- corporeal, “ghostly” mind or soul. (Rather reminiscent, for readers of a certain age, of the Beano cartoon ‘the numbskulls’.)

In fact, a moment’s reflection should be all we need to realise the interconnectedness of mind, body and spirit; a brisk walk (or even a cup of strong coffee) has an immediate effect on our mental state, our thought processes, our emotions, our spirits; the border between mind on the one hand and body on the other is blurred and porous.

So this means that exercise can, and perhaps should, be something we do not just to benefit our body, but also to benefit our mind, (and our spirit, every bit of us.) In fact exercise should be something that includes the mind; so that when we move we move “mindfully”. We should avoid compartmentalising ourselves so that when we exercise our mind is elsewhere, distracted, worrying perhaps, planning, cut off from our body; our mind should ideally be fully involved in our moving body. And likewise, when we do mental work, we should avoid losing touch with our body (easier than ever these days, perhaps, with the effect of technology; in extreme cases, a few people have actually died after playing computer games non-stop for 24 hours or more – presumably having become in the process so out of touch with their physical experience that they were unable to heed the warning signs of a developing cardiovascular crisis!). Our motto should perhaps be ‘move with the mind, think with the body.

Exercise, especially in this integrated way, has big gains for us in our totality. Our awareness can become crisper; our thinking clearer, our Qi – to use the Chinese expression – flows freely. Stuck emotions can be freed up.

For instance, I was struck recently by the fact that I was, as far as I recall, never taught how to think. Suppose we need to think clearly about an issue on our life, how do we do that? Maybe if we have done a philosophy degree or something like that we have learnt how to think, but the rest of us probably just bumble along without really knowing how to think clearly. No doubt this is a big question, but perhaps part of the answer is to do with exercise and movement (another part of it is to do with how we eat – in Chinese medicine there is an explicit connection between the digestive system and the thinking faculty.) D.H. Lawrence said that thought was “a man in his wholeness, wholly attending.” This makes it clear that thought is not a compartmentalised activity but an integrated one, and therefore something we do with our body as well as our mind –a fact perhaps illustrated by Rodin’s sculpture ‘the thinker’. If we want to think well, we need a well exercised body.

And what about that mysterious thing, the spirit? I take the word to mean something about how alive we are, how vital, how much we have got to meet the challenges and demands of life. Again exercise helps build spirit in this sense. A word perhaps should be put in here for discipline, which is closely associated with building spirit. An important part of any exercise programme is how it teaches us to discipline ourselves (or even to accept discipline from a teacher, as for example in a traditional martial arts context.) Do we still go for a run even though it is raining? Do we get up early to do our yoga practice before work, even when we are so warm and comfy in bed? Do we refuse to settle for going through the motions of a Tai Chi form, not letting our mind wander? If the answer to these questions is yes, we will gradually build a strong spirit to serve us well in life’s inevitable ups and downs.

Exercise, then, is something which should involve every part of us, and from which every part of us, mind, body and spirit, has much to benefit from.

Reconciling Wu Wei with Sean Barkes

I've always struggled with Tai Chi and Chi Kung. Much of the philosophy behind these arts is based upon the concept of Wu Wei. Certainly, I've always been attracted to the concept of Wu Wei (literally 'non-action). For those unfamiliar with the concept, it is the idea that, in order to harmonise with nature or live naturally, we should not push or make effort in our endeavours. This is diametrically opposed to all that is me!

So, how do I reconcile this with my deep-seated desire to improve, grow and push forwards against all odds?

Well, one of the phrases which is often associated with the concept of Wu Wei, is "following the path of least resistance". Water, in its qualities and behaviour, has often been used to help describe the philosophy of Wu Wei. Water follows the path of least resistance. Water never rests. If it slows, it becomes stagnant and stale. From the moment water droplets form around a nucleus in a rain cloud, water has the desire to move and change. Before it hits the ground, even, it has the intention of finding the lowest point. It's ultimate, and insatiable desire is to move forwards. Sure, it is influenced by factors surrounding it, but still it moves forwards. Even as it arrives at the ocean, it continues to move in the waves, tides and the currents as it is influenced by other forces such as wind, temperature and the moon. Eventually, it evaporates and returns to the clouds for yet another cycle. These cycles are eternal and endless.

This is where I reconcile my competitive instinct, my deep-rooted desire to be better tomorrow than I was today and to create in every moment. Where I become lost, from time to time, is when I fail to follow the path of least resistance in the pursuance of these goals. This manifests in a race when I push myself beyond the point where my breathing and movement is efficient, not necessarily effortless, but at least flowing. My movement becomes laboured, awkward and uncomfortable. Also, in my work, in business, when I do not balance activity and rest or in exercise, when I do not properly balance soft and hard exercise, I become tired, tense, irritable and lose focus. Nature always has it's way of reminding me that I'm departing from its rhythms. 

So, this is how I reconcile the philosophy upon which Tai Chi, a significant part of my life for decades, is based and my approach to everything else I do.

Four Dimensional Tai Chi

Tai Chi is a four dimensional exercise. A beginner practices Tai Chi in one dimension: left and right; moving on one plane. The intermediate student practices Tai Chi in a two dimensions; the added dimension being up and down (rising/falling, sinking/floating). Two dimensional Tai Chi is disjointed. It has up and down, left and right, but no expansion or contraction or, indeed, any integration and blending of all these directions. Advanced students perform Tai Chi in three dimensions. Three-dimensional Tai Chi blends all these directions in a seamless flow creating spiralling movements. One who has mastered Tai Chi performs it in a four dimensions. The fourth dimension is the mind. But when I say "mind", I do not mean the brain. I include the functions of the brain but also its connections with the rest of the body via the nervous system. The fourth dimension includes the influence of the mind on the extremities and the skin surface. This is the body's refined proprioceptive ability. As far as I can make out, this is a combination of two Chinese concepts: Ting Jing (listening power) and Zhōng Dìng (central equilibrium). Because of the time and dedication required to develop it, most people will only achieve a glimpse of four dimensional Tai Chi.

Mindful Movement

By now most everybody must have got the message that some sort of exercise is important in maintaining health. But something else which the medical establishment is waking up to, perhaps rather belatedly, is mindfulness; only last night I saw a snippet on a local news programme about how arthritis sufferers are benefitting from using mindfulness to help control pain.

Mindfulness is not something new; people have been practising it for at least 2,500 years! It involves simply paying attention to the present moment, a moment-to-moment awareness of what is going on in our experience. And whilst mindfulness is associated with meditation, when it is combined with exercise, it creates forms of movement such as Tai Chi and Chi Kung which are particularly powerful in terms of recovering, maintaining and enhancing health and well-being.

You can get something of a sense of what mindful movement is like by watching an experienced Tai Chi practitioner; and also by watching the way some animals move – think, for instance, of how a cat moves as she stalks her prey. Her mind is fully focused on what she is doing, in fact her whole being is concentrated on the task. (Not, however, the kind of concentration that you can see in humans who are forcing their mind on to something, brows furrowed.) She moves gracefully and harmoniously, flowing apparently effortlessly from one movement to the next. This kind of movement is strikingly different from, say, the movement of someone on a gym treadmill with music pounding through their earphones, maybe even watching a video monitor,  and a mind which, perhaps, is jumping from one thought to the next.

As the cat moves, she moves in harmony with her environment; cats aren’t usually clumsy. Her movement is relaxed and supple, muscles only contracting when they need to, again in contrast to how humans often move, muscles habitually tensed to no purpose. You can get a sense that in the simple process of prowling through the garden, the cat is exercising her whole body.

Perhaps you can say that the cat inhabits her body, again in contrast to how humans can be; the runner on the treadmill watching TV has their attention away from, outside of , their body. Even, we could say, they are alienated from their body. It is as if their body is something separate, which they know they need to look after, rather in the way they might walk the dog, but which they only experience at arm’s length. Without mindfulness, body and mind are not harmonised.

Of course there is no reason why the person on the treadmill cannot make mindfulness part of what they are dong - ditching the earphones is a start. But the beauty of things like Tai Chi and Chi Kung is that mindfulness is so essential to their practice. It would be hardly possible, for instance, to do Tai Chi or Chi Kung whilst at the same time watching the telly.

Of course humans have a lot going for them that cats can only dream of. In a way the price we have paid for the much greater mental sophistication we have is the loss of the natural and supple way the cat inhabits her body. It is not that we can go back and become animal again, even if we want to. Rather, the mindfulness we develop through the practice of things like Chi Kung and Tai Chi gives us the opportunity to re-acquire something of the grace and fluidity of, for instance, the cat, without sacrificing the best of what makes us human. This is a deeply satisfying experience in which we re-connect both with our body and with the world in which it moves. Indeed the combination of our distinctively human self-consciousness with the body awareness of the cat makes for an enhanced level of being in which we feel deeply at home in our body and fully connected with the world without losing our sense of our individuality and distinctness, which is in fact enhanced. We have all the languid connectedness of the cat combined with the pristine self-awareness of the human.

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