Tai Chi and Writing

Learning how to hold everything and nothing and be open and soft....all at once

There is no mystique to Tai Chi Chuan. What is difficult is the perseverance. It took me ten years to discover my chi, but thirty years to learn how to use it. Once you see the benefit, you won't want to stop."
― Ma Yueh Liang

I have returned to tai chi. It sounds so small, and in a way it is, 50 minutes twice a week, going through the warm-up and the 108 form, followed by a short practice of qigong.

But it is a lot, in so many ways.

The classes here are at 5:30 pm. Often by 5:30, I’m exhausted by my writing day, especially now, when I’m deep in the stream and holding the lives of several characters in my head, my heart, all day, living with them through some big traumas and explorations and trying to be very, very present with the next sentence, the next conversation. It’s emotionally and mentally challenging to do this work, but it’s also hard physically—it makes my shoulders and upper back very tired, and my hands need a lot of extra love.

Often, as I’m trying to get some dinner on the table in time for us to go, I say, “I am so tired. I really don’t want to go today.” And my husband will nod, knowing that my next words will be, “But I guess I will anyway.” I go, and I’m glad, and by the time we get back home an hour later, I have enough energy to go for a second walk or do some painting or something else way healthier that collapsing in my chair with my latest streaming show.

(Not that there is anything wrong with streaming or sitting. I do that, too, sometimes.)

Tai chi is so much more than the videos you see of old people moving slowly on the grass of some park. It is an ancient form of martial art, the basis of kung fu (one description is that tai chi is kung fu slowed waayyyy down to utilize internal energy) and a kind of dance, exercise for balance and intrinsic strength.

In 2014 or somewhere around there, some people Neal knew opened a tai chi studio. He attended the opening and when he got home said, “I think you would really enjoy tai chi.” He showed me photos of their big, plant-filled space with golden wood and a deeply serene vibe. Michael, the sifu, is also stoic and calming, so when they offered us a chance to try it, Neal and I both decided to leap. He liked it…okay.

Just as he suspected, however, I found connection and depth in the people and the practice. For several years, I attended classes regularly, and went to a couple of tai chi retreats in the mountains.

Unfortunately, I had a serious ankle injury in 2019 that meant I could not go to classes for nearly 6 months. By the time I could return, I was buried in life issues that required a lot of time and emotional energy and I just…didn’t get back to classes. Next month, I told myself. Next month.

Then came 2020 and everything it brought with it, and I never got back to tai chi classes. I would sometimes still practice in my backyard, or do the warm up, but I’d found the soul of the practice was, for me, in class.

When we moved to Bandon, someone casually mentioned the tai chi teacher she knew and I perked up. Tai chi? Where? When? It was as surprising to find the tai chi classes as it was to find a fully functioning, if small, Unity church not a half mile from my house. Such happiness!

We signed up last spring. Neal decided to come with me, and both of us have been attending classes twice a week ever since. My new sifu is lighter in spirit and a joker, but just as serious about correct form, about practice, practice, practice, and although it took me awhile to get back in stride, I can finally do most of the 108 form on my own. That doesn’t mean I’ve mastered it by any stretch. Tai chi comes to the practitioner in layers, form, breath, energy.

It’s the energy aspect, the flow of chi, that most interests me. When I was practicing tai chi and qigong regularly, I became aware of the way I could move energy within my body, raising and quieting it, allowing it to flow.

But I had lost that awareness by the time we started here, along with a lot of my balance and some of the flexibility in my spine, and most of the finer points of the moves. By the end of the summer, I was starting to remember how it felt to get into the meditative state, focusing on this move, then that one, a very specific be here now. To do it correctly, the feet must be properly placed, the knees bent just right, the hips aligned, the shoulders straight, the arms this way, the wrists just so, the head high. Now, a new move. And again.

This practice has begun to restore my balance, strengthening my wonky ankle so surprisingly that I was standing on one foot and didn’t even notice. My shoulders are straighter. My walking is better timed, for lack of a better way to say it.

But that isn’t the best part.

A couple of weeks ago, we practiced in silence, moving together in these precise ways, and I became aware of the chi flowing through my body, into my limbs and hands and feet, lighting up everything. It wasn’t loud or intense, it just was . Heat, light…probably power if I wanted to direct it that way. Chi. Life force, energy, whatever name we give it. It’s the thing that reiki healers use, a healing art scientists absolutely do not understand, but hospitals use it anyway because…well, it works. Not on everything, but on many things.

One of the reasons I love writing so much is that I have a restless, endlessly hungry brain and writing is not something that will ever be mastered. It reveals something new all the time, some delicate tiny thing, or sometimes a big one. By practicing writing novels my entire adult life, I’ve learned a tremendous amount about the kind of novels I’m drawn to writing, and they keep challenging me, keep me fascinated and engaged. But it happens in a very ordinary daily practice, performing the same moves over and over. I make tea and sit down and write a sentence, and then another one. Day after day.

Tai chi is very much the same, an unmasterable and challenging practice that continues to offer more and deeper insights the more you delve into it. Moving so slowly, minute by minute, teaches me to be present, just as I’ve learned (and forget, over and over) to do with the writing. One day, I will know much more about the chi in my practice, but now, I focus on my form, the same way I focus on a sentence. The way I focus on this hour, a day in a child’s life at this age, the painting I can do now, not in some future where I’ve learned more. Here, now, this.

Have you ever practiced tai chi or other martial art?