Taiji taught me how to be in my life even when it wasn't easy.
I've been practicing martial arts since 1984 and Guang Ping Yang Taijiquan since 1998. Somewhere along the way, the physical practice became a way of understanding myself, other people, and the strange business of being human.
Taiji taught me to notice what happens before I react.
The mind races ahead. Feelings take over. The body tightens. We tell ourselves stories about what is happening, what should be happening, and what might happen next.
And then there is another possibility.
We can notice all of that without handing it the steering wheel.
I call the place from which we can do that Essence.
Essence isn't something we have to create or achieve. It's always within us. It's our natural center, our true nature, the part of us that can remain present and connected even when life gets messy.
Through mindful movement practices, I began to recognize when I wasn't living from this sage center. Slowly, I learned to recognize it, inhabit more of it, and trust it.
The movements matter. I care deeply about good technique, lineage, and the intelligence contained in these traditional practices.
But I'm less interested in helping people perform a perfect movement than I am in exploring what the movement can teach us about living.
The Practice
In Taiji and the other practices I teach, we learn to embody our quieter inner space.
We notice sensation, breath, tension, balance, stillness, and change. In doing so, we become more aware of the moments when mental chatter, emotional waves, or physical sensations pull us away from our wise center, Essence.
It's not about shutting down the chatter, emotion, or sensation. It's about becoming aware of them and listening.
I sometimes call these our Three Advisors.
They have useful things to tell us. They just aren't meant to be in charge.
Over the years, my training has expanded to include Qigong, Meridian Massage Acupressure, meditation, Chinese Medicine Theory, Fascial Fitness, Balance and Fall Prevention, and Yoga RYT-E. My work with balance and fall prevention led to the development of Taiji For Balance, which also gave me the opportunity to participate in research exploring Taiji as an approach to balance and wellbeing.
But underneath all of it is a much simpler question:
What happens when we learn to live from our center, our Essence, rather than constantly being pulled away from it by the active Advisors?
That's what I play with. How can I occupy more stillness when the waves of life become big and overwhelming?
Life has given me plenty of opportunities to practice, as I imagine it has for you!
My path has included family alcoholism and dysfunction, illness and loss, relationships that challenged me, career changes, and the ordinary accumulation of things that can pull any of us away from ourselves.
Taiji didn't spare me from experiences. It gave me somewhere to land while moving through them.
And that's what I hope everyone gets to experience.
A way to come back to that sage center we all have.
I teach these practices to people who are curious, like to explore, want to be with others who feel the same.
These practices invite us to live from our anchored Essence rather than getting swept up in the whirl of our Advisors. And I have many people to thank for guiding me here.
My Taiji teachers, Paki Sukwattana, Jeff Burton, and Nina Deerfield, were pivotal in my training. And through the Guang Ping Yang Association, I was incredibly lucky and honored to learn from masters and grandmasters including Henry Look, Y.C. Chiang, Hui Liu, Randy Elia, and Paul Taylor. These teachers can’t possibly know the impact they’ve had on my life.
But the real learning happens in community, by playing with this rich art together, noticing what it has to teach us, and discovering what happens when we bring it into our lives.
That's the kind of learning I want to keep doing, and the kind of community I want to create.
Lucy
