Flow & Tai Chi
The importance of flow for Tai Chi and martial arts in general have been most evocatively described by Bruce Lee:
“Be like water . . . empty your mind, be formless, shapeless like water. If you put water in the cup, it becomes the cup. You put water in the bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in the teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now,water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.” (Little & Lee, 2000, TV documentary)
“We are always in a process of becoming and nothing is fixed. Have no rigid system in you, and you’ll be flexible to change with the ever changing. Open yourself and flow, my friend. Flow in the total openness of the living moment. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.” (Lee, 2000, p. 13).”
Three Levels of Flow during Tai Chi Practice
“Be like water . . . empty your mind, be formless, shapeless like water. If you put water in the cup, it becomes the cup. You put water in the bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in the teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now,water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.” (Little & Lee, 2000, TV documentary)
“We are always in a process of becoming and nothing is fixed. Have no rigid system in you, and you’ll be flexible to change with the ever changing. Open yourself and flow, my friend. Flow in the total openness of the living moment. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.” (Lee, 2000, p. 13).”
Three Levels of Flow during Tai Chi Practice
- Flowing within Automatic Movement: First when you practice the movements of a Tai Chi or Qi Gong sequence enough times (and with the right professional support), they become automatic over time. These over-learned automatic movements allow you to lose yourself, and your worries, while being immersed in the practice. You become the sequence of movements, with the structure they provide (a start-middle-end; a particular speed and rhythm; the exact shapes and directions of the movements). Music is often used during Tai Chi practice to intensify this effect. While you are performing the movements, your post-injury pieces of self may be experienced as held together, like the leaves in the stream.
- Flowing-Together: A second level of flow can be experienced in a group class, during moments when everyone is performing the same movements at the same time (perhaps all being moved by the same piece of music too). This would be like a shoal of fish moving together or thousands of starlings in a murmuration. In addition to moving together, you may form close friendships with other survivors of neurological conditions who train with you each week. You become a team or fellowship and form a close connection, perhaps in contrast to other times in your life since the injury/onset of the condition when you have felt isolated and alone. So your Tai Chi group is like the current of the stream – it is bigger than all of its members and confers unique psychological benefits, unavailable to individual practitioners. Research has shown that membership of a social, leisure or pastime group following the onset of a neurological condition such as stroke can positively improve wellbeing and sense of identity in survivors (Haslam et al., 2005).
- Natural and Universal Flow: The final level of flow is to experience oneself as part of a universal natural process. This could be called a spiritual or religious experience, if consistent with your beliefs (and spirituality is a commonly-neglected dimension of neuro-rehabilitation). For others this could be a deep appreciation of nature. In China many Tai Chi and Qi Gong practitioners perform their movements in the outdoors, such as in a park, near water or old trees. The Daoist monks and nuns who perform tai chi as part of their religious devotions often do so in isolated wooded mountains. The idea here is to perform the movements while noticing, appreciating and connecting with nature around you. This may be noticing the sounds and colours of natural life immediately around you (birds, animals, trees, the wind). Or this may be practicing tai chi in the same spot in nature the whole year round and appreciating the change of the seasons around you. Many of the Tai Chi or Qi Gong movements are often named after natural phenomena, such as cloud hands, bamboo rocking in the wind, parting the wild horses mane and snake creeps through the grass.Daoists perform tai chi to synchronise their internal processes and experiences with broader patterns of nature and universal processes, to be part of something fundamentally-bigger than themselves (more). To experience oneself at the level of nature and the universe is to put one’s daily concerns and struggles in a much different perspective for that period of time.
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