Internal Harmony
The title of this post suggests that this is going to be very deep. Yeah, that's probably true. In October 2013 I spent the last 7 days learning a number of different disciplines from Grandmaster Nick Gracenin. For those of you living in Washington DC, I hope you realize how lucky you are to have a martial artist of Master Nick's ability living in your city and actively teaching. I have learned such an incredible amount from Master Nick that I really need to take some time and reflect and absorb all of it but I feel that I have to share this one tidbit with the folks who might read my blog because it does relate to how we live our lives not just martial arts and not surprisingly has a lot to do with the overall theme of this blog.
There is a concept of harmonies in Tai Chi. There are external harmonies which refer to the kinetic harmonies within our bodies that we need to understand. The internal harmonies refer to the part of ourselves that we can't see and as a martial artist, understanding the connection makes a very big difference. I know that my own teacher and Master Nick have taught this lesson to me before but for some reason it clicked with me during my sessions with Master Nick this year. I guess that means I was ready to learn it :-D. Note to teachers, if a student doesn't respond to your lesson, it might not be a reflection of your teaching ability, rather it might be that the student just isn't prepared to absorb the lesson. If the cup is full and you continue to pour tea it will just spill on the ground. You can't get more Kung Fu than that!
Anyway... the internal harmonies...
Your heart harmonizes with your intention, your intention harmonizes with your chi and your chi harmonizes with your movement (or action). I've come to realize that without an understanding of Chinese culture, the concepts can be quite difficult to understand simply because some of the words don't translate directly to english while maintaining the real meaning. I think "chi" is a tough one. I won't go into it a great deal because, honestly, I'm still trying to understand the meaning myself and not knowing mandarin I think is a road block for me. Let's think of "chi" as "energy" for now.
So in relation to the overall theme of my blog, The Great Escape, where I'm focusing mostly on the escape from workplace drudgery and the land of endless cubicles I have come to understand physical change alone does not equal a change in your situation and I think that has a lot to do with embracing the internal harmonies. I have started to discover this on my own but I was never really able to articulate it until I started to study Tai Chi and I have been finding that extending the concepts of Tai Chi beyond just martial arts practice is bringing my entire life into more focus. I want to try and clarify that the idea of The Great Escape is not about a physical or external change but more about an internal change. We may not have the power to control the company we work for and force them to create a Google-esqe workplace but we certainly have control over ourselves and how we view the world and our place in the bigger picture.
In the past I have talked about finding and following your passion. In relation to the internal harmonies, passion is your heart. We need to understand our own feelings. For many of us we don't have enough internal balance to really understand nor do we take the time to understand our own hearts. I would strongly encourage you to take time to meditate and quiet your mind so you can hear your heart. Meditation doesn't have to be some mystical experience. It's just taking time to let thoughts enter your mind and then training yourself to let them go. So often we focus on a thought or something that happened at work or our debt situation and we latch on to the thought and obsess about it and let it drag us down into a rabbit hole of tension and stress. We know that these things don't just magically go away so what's the harm in taking 15 minutes to let it go and not think about it. After your meditation all of the problems will be there waiting for you but maybe in that 15 minutes of a quiet mind you can hear what your heart says and find some calm. Maybe that calm will help you view your problems differently and just maybe a solution will present itself. Worst case nothing changes and you give yourself a break from the constant stress. In other words, you have nothing to lose by trying.
Now comes the hard part, taking your feeling and turning that into intention. I have heard things like "follow your own path" or "be the best YOU you can be" so many times and it means nothing to me. Sure, I'm happy to follow my own path, where the hell is it? What is it? Well, the hard part is that it comes from you and your path is your intention. Without knowing your heart and your passion, you can't know your intention or follow your own path and that can leave you feeling a little lost.
Once you know your intention or path you can't simply put the intention into action and I think this is where we quite often fail ourselves. There is a step required to move from intention to action and that is expressing the proper energy (chi). This is such a complex part of ourselves that I don't think it's possible to understand without meditation. Let me try to simplify what I mean by energy. I have a hammer and I have a nail and I have an arm to swing the hammer. Exactly how I use all of these things in combination is dependant on what I am trying to accomplish. If what I am trying to do with all of these things is hang a picture, the energy is very different than if I am trying to drive a 4 inch spike through a 2x4. The intention of driving a nail into some object is the same but the energy changes relative to what I am trying to accomplish and this dictates my actions. If every time I needed to use a hammer I apply the exact same energy and that energy happens to be that used to drive the spike I would never be able to hang a picture and I would destroy a lot of walls. Without understanding the difference in energy required to bring forth my intention, I think I would be very frustrated and feel as though I failed. When I was a kid, I marvelled at how easily my dad was able to pound nails into wood for whatever purpose. With very little experience in using a hammer, my repertoire of energy was limited and it took time and practice to find the right energy to match my intention.
With all of the harmonies aligned, action becomes much easier. Putting our passion, intention and energy into action still takes a lot of effort. We're human and one of the things we need to understand is that every human learns by making mistakes. Even with everything aligned perfectly (or seemingly so) we are bound to make mistakes and that is why we need to practice. We need to practice everything. We need to practice martial arts, sports, art, music, relationships, our work, driving... everything! If we stop practicing we stop getting better. It might be safer because maybe we won't make mistakes but when we stop making mistakes we miss out on the best opportunities to learn. Putting everything into action simply takes effort and we need to learn to not fear mistakes but embrace them.
I know a lot of people who struggle with the every day and I think in reality, we all struggle to some degree. For me, I find that the concept of internal harmonies is very helpful in dealing with the stresses of life and it helps to keep my focused. It's up to me to put in the effort to maintain the focus but I have a method that works for me and the more I practice, the better I understand not just the linkages between the harmonies but also myself.
There is a concept of harmonies in Tai Chi. There are external harmonies which refer to the kinetic harmonies within our bodies that we need to understand. The internal harmonies refer to the part of ourselves that we can't see and as a martial artist, understanding the connection makes a very big difference. I know that my own teacher and Master Nick have taught this lesson to me before but for some reason it clicked with me during my sessions with Master Nick this year. I guess that means I was ready to learn it :-D. Note to teachers, if a student doesn't respond to your lesson, it might not be a reflection of your teaching ability, rather it might be that the student just isn't prepared to absorb the lesson. If the cup is full and you continue to pour tea it will just spill on the ground. You can't get more Kung Fu than that!
Anyway... the internal harmonies...
Your heart harmonizes with your intention, your intention harmonizes with your chi and your chi harmonizes with your movement (or action). I've come to realize that without an understanding of Chinese culture, the concepts can be quite difficult to understand simply because some of the words don't translate directly to english while maintaining the real meaning. I think "chi" is a tough one. I won't go into it a great deal because, honestly, I'm still trying to understand the meaning myself and not knowing mandarin I think is a road block for me. Let's think of "chi" as "energy" for now.
So in relation to the overall theme of my blog, The Great Escape, where I'm focusing mostly on the escape from workplace drudgery and the land of endless cubicles I have come to understand physical change alone does not equal a change in your situation and I think that has a lot to do with embracing the internal harmonies. I have started to discover this on my own but I was never really able to articulate it until I started to study Tai Chi and I have been finding that extending the concepts of Tai Chi beyond just martial arts practice is bringing my entire life into more focus. I want to try and clarify that the idea of The Great Escape is not about a physical or external change but more about an internal change. We may not have the power to control the company we work for and force them to create a Google-esqe workplace but we certainly have control over ourselves and how we view the world and our place in the bigger picture.
In the past I have talked about finding and following your passion. In relation to the internal harmonies, passion is your heart. We need to understand our own feelings. For many of us we don't have enough internal balance to really understand nor do we take the time to understand our own hearts. I would strongly encourage you to take time to meditate and quiet your mind so you can hear your heart. Meditation doesn't have to be some mystical experience. It's just taking time to let thoughts enter your mind and then training yourself to let them go. So often we focus on a thought or something that happened at work or our debt situation and we latch on to the thought and obsess about it and let it drag us down into a rabbit hole of tension and stress. We know that these things don't just magically go away so what's the harm in taking 15 minutes to let it go and not think about it. After your meditation all of the problems will be there waiting for you but maybe in that 15 minutes of a quiet mind you can hear what your heart says and find some calm. Maybe that calm will help you view your problems differently and just maybe a solution will present itself. Worst case nothing changes and you give yourself a break from the constant stress. In other words, you have nothing to lose by trying.
Now comes the hard part, taking your feeling and turning that into intention. I have heard things like "follow your own path" or "be the best YOU you can be" so many times and it means nothing to me. Sure, I'm happy to follow my own path, where the hell is it? What is it? Well, the hard part is that it comes from you and your path is your intention. Without knowing your heart and your passion, you can't know your intention or follow your own path and that can leave you feeling a little lost.
Once you know your intention or path you can't simply put the intention into action and I think this is where we quite often fail ourselves. There is a step required to move from intention to action and that is expressing the proper energy (chi). This is such a complex part of ourselves that I don't think it's possible to understand without meditation. Let me try to simplify what I mean by energy. I have a hammer and I have a nail and I have an arm to swing the hammer. Exactly how I use all of these things in combination is dependant on what I am trying to accomplish. If what I am trying to do with all of these things is hang a picture, the energy is very different than if I am trying to drive a 4 inch spike through a 2x4. The intention of driving a nail into some object is the same but the energy changes relative to what I am trying to accomplish and this dictates my actions. If every time I needed to use a hammer I apply the exact same energy and that energy happens to be that used to drive the spike I would never be able to hang a picture and I would destroy a lot of walls. Without understanding the difference in energy required to bring forth my intention, I think I would be very frustrated and feel as though I failed. When I was a kid, I marvelled at how easily my dad was able to pound nails into wood for whatever purpose. With very little experience in using a hammer, my repertoire of energy was limited and it took time and practice to find the right energy to match my intention.
With all of the harmonies aligned, action becomes much easier. Putting our passion, intention and energy into action still takes a lot of effort. We're human and one of the things we need to understand is that every human learns by making mistakes. Even with everything aligned perfectly (or seemingly so) we are bound to make mistakes and that is why we need to practice. We need to practice everything. We need to practice martial arts, sports, art, music, relationships, our work, driving... everything! If we stop practicing we stop getting better. It might be safer because maybe we won't make mistakes but when we stop making mistakes we miss out on the best opportunities to learn. Putting everything into action simply takes effort and we need to learn to not fear mistakes but embrace them.
I know a lot of people who struggle with the every day and I think in reality, we all struggle to some degree. For me, I find that the concept of internal harmonies is very helpful in dealing with the stresses of life and it helps to keep my focused. It's up to me to put in the effort to maintain the focus but I have a method that works for me and the more I practice, the better I understand not just the linkages between the harmonies but also myself.
I like these thoughts. I attended a lecture this fall where two women spoke about harmony vs. balance, harmony being a state of repose, whereas balance is a constant effort. Since then, I've really paid attention to how people use the two words, and I think, ultimately, harmony is what we strive for (or should strive for).
ReplyDeleteI've recently tried to meditate and must admit I find it a challenge. Between obsessive thinking and ADD, I'm not ready for the free-flowing thought approach. For now, I choose something to focus on (a sound, a sensation) and just try to be present. I hope some day to meditate more organically and freely.
The concept of harmony and balance is interesting and probably not entirely unlike the Yin and Yang concepts that we try to employ in Tai Chi. I think that harmony can bring about balance and finding a place of harmony may be an effort but I think that applies to any new skill. I also think that balance is a byproduct of harmony. If you happen to remember the names of either of the speakers let me know, I'd be interested to read about their ideas.
DeleteMeditation is much more difficult than most people think. It sounds like you have the correct approach but it's like any other skill, it takes practice and time to perfect. I've been doing it for years and I still don't feel like I've got it right but I do feel that I've improved. There are a lot of different meditation methods and I'm sure you'll find one that works for you if you keep trying. The benefits really are worth the effort.
It was Nedra Lander and Danielle Nahon: http://meaning.ca/conference/nedra-lander-ph-d-danielle-nahon-ph-d/
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