Fitness for the Agelesss

 

Tai Chi Practice as Kinesthetic Awareness

Much, if not all, of my study of psychosomatic reality, is an examination of Taijiquan as a practice of kinesthtic awareness as it contributes to ultimate fitness.  The following touches on a few aspects of taijiquan practice with comments from my review of literature.

My taiji practice has become very refined in that I spend as much time sensing what it is that I am feeling, as I spend on trying to perfect my form. The two objectives are actually just one, since putting my focus on how it feels is the best form practice. What I am doing less of is going through form sequences for the exercise of getting better by repetitive practice. A long term or perhaps I should call it, my life time goal, is to see what affect deep kinesthetic awareness has on my movement ability as I age.

Kinesthesis does decline with age as our connective tissue stiffens, dries out, loses collegen due to disuse, and possibly loses some proprioceptors necessary to maintain a high level of awareness of our place in space. Alexander Technique alludes to a “faulty sense of awareness” that we have about our body alignment or any sense of ourselves. This occurs as we become “used to” what feels normal and that becomes our default position.

Is it possible, with consistent high focus, to retain a greater level of kinesthesis with age which would result in greater mobility in alignment, which would maintain greater “kinesthetic fitness”. It is common for tai chi promoters to state that tai chi is good for maintaining memory in older adults. The presumption is that learning and remembering the long sequential forms is good memory practice which aids in the retention of their memory faculty. That is fine, but I like the view that “muscle memory” only exists as a psychosomatic sense of how it feels (Deane Juhan, “Job’s Body”) and that tai chi sequences practice is a kinesthetic practice.

Interjecting a mention of “Sprezzatura” as it relates to moving easily with gracefulness. Sprezzature is an Italian term meaning the ability to make something difficult look easy. It was first coined to describe the grace and elegance that court couriers exhibited in performing their tasks. It was used to describe the graceful elegance of ballet dancers.

It doesn’t matter how much sprezzatura is observable, it is the feeling of ease and grace that is important to kinesthetic fitness. Out of alignment feels out of alignment, but only if you pay attention to it. A faulty sense of awareness may allow you to feel aligned when you are not, because of default normal position. Ultimately pain and/or dysfunction will step in to keep you honest. A future post will detail the biomechanical and biophysiological aspects of this “normal” awareness as a default.

In my tai chi practice*, while I maintain my sequences forms for teaching purposes and pride in being able to do them, my daily tai chi is focused on single form or repetitive form practice such as cat walk flow patterns. I may move at the slowest pace possible while putting my focus on a single aspect of alignment, or foot placement, or timing of upper and lower body. Basically I am practicing the “10 Principles” one at at time (as if that is possible). My gaze# may shift from the feeling of weight transfer in my feet to the position of my arms (hands and fingers) at any one point in the form movement. I can feel disconnection from the principles in many of the form movements that cause me difficulty. My continued improvement, as I see and feel it, is tied to this kinesthetic awareness of “what feels right”.

*practice: the use of this word is a bit of a pet peeve as I would prefer to “do” tai chi rather than practice it. This may come from my lifetime association of practice as what you do to improve when you are not actually doing the activity. I spent far more hours in the gym with the teams I coached, practicing and perfecting, rather than just playing the sport of volleyball. My personal experience as a volleyball player was much the reverse as I learned to play by playing and had very little coaching. Good coaching did evolve to include much more game situation competition rather than isolated skill drills, but still lacked the true game atmosphere. While teaching tai chi is a great way to learn and perfect forms, it also gets in the way of truly feeling kinesthetically. I had a student tell me that my tai chi didn’t look as relaxed as what they saw in videos. Part of this is due to the fact that as I demonstrated or led sequence practice I tended to exaggerate positions to be sure they could be seen by students. This is not conducive to good tai chi kinesthesis. In my back deck practice I try to do forms with awareness of flow and just pay attention to the accompanying “feeling” of forms as they arise.

#gaze: Gaze as I use it in tai chi practice has an expansive definition. Clearly one looks in the directions of the gaze, but the gaze begins well before the movement and the gaze leads the movement to the end point. At its outset the gaze may be the “intent” referred to in the 10 Principles, in “Use Intent Rather Than Force”. This can be misunderstood as meaning to stay relaxed and don’t force it, but I see “Intent” as a sense of the end goal purpose and it is found in the kinesthetic sense of moving to a psychosomatically felt end point position.

Moving from “empty to full” is another pricnciple that describes the process of using “Intent” towards an end point. (I prefer from “substantial to insubstantial,” instead of empty to full, as at no point is one truly empty or full) (Thich Nhat Hanh said “if the cups is empty, what is it empty of”). The movement towards full is towards a full expression of the energy in gathering which may lead to a release, felt as insubstantial, as you move towards the next end point, gathering to substantial end point. In affect, I use gaze as the practice of inner kinesthetic awareness. There is a visualization or inner looking that relates gaze to the use of the eyes to see where you are going.

From a martial application perspective you do need to use your eyes to see your opponent, but, as practiced in push hands, it is the listening to feel your opponents energy that gives the feedback needed to react to and counter your opponents energy. As such, push hands is the practice of gaze and, in some views, the ultimate “practice” of tai chi. Can one than take this listening energy and imbue ones tai chi with it at all times, in a sense, listening to ones own kinesthesis.

Many of the points raised above will be revisited as I make more discoveries in our anatomy and physiogical systems.