Author: Sam Langley

Are You Comfortable?

The article Are You Comfortable? is reprinted on Slanted Flying website with the permission of the author Sam Langley from his personal Blog.

In the modern world we try to avoid pain and discomfort at all costs. If I get a headache the easiest thing to do is take a paracetamol, if it’s cold I can turn on the central heating.
It is my opinion that pain and discomfort should be listened to and not anaesthetized. If I take painkillers when I’m hungover I may be avoiding a valuable lesson in alcohol moderation!

Very often things that are uncomfortable are beneficial. Exposure to the cold has been shown to be very good for your health. Inspired by Wim Hoff ‘The Iceman’ I began taking cold showers every morning. This was definitely not an easy thing to do in the middle of winter! Cold showers are initially extremely uncomfortable but you feel absolutely amazing afterwards.
Similarly, Tai Chi practice brings us face to face with discomfort. This is probably the reason that 99% of people quit after a few lessons. I believe that one of the great benefits of regular Tai Chi training is that you learn to become comfortable with discomfort. Beginners tend to find the standing qigong particularly hard. If they persevere for a year or two however it gets easier. It’s not necessarily that the legs stop burning but that the mind gets calmer.

Gradually you notice that, more and more, you can maintain a feeling of calm composure when things get difficult. It is my contention, based only on experience, that Tai Chi practice and standing in particular has a profound effect on the fight or flight response of our primitive mind. This has obvious martial implications but also makes all your relationships easier.

To me, discomfort is something to be faced and experienced fully. It’s not just that you’ll often gain great benefits from arduous activities and I’m not a masochist by any stretch of the imagination, it’s more that pain is the easiest way to be present in the here and now. It is never my intention to put people off Tai Chi by mentioning the pain and difficulty but it should be clear that only by experiencing them will one really get somewhere with it. Once again however what we’re really training in this respect is the mind. Things are difficult because we say they are. From this perspective Tai Chi isn’t difficult at all. The way I approach practice is in a relaxed and perhaps nonchalant manner. It’s not a competition, you can do as much or as little as you are able to, have fun! It’s enjoyable, all of it…. even the pain!

May 31, 2017
Don’t Know Mind

The article Don’t Know Mind is reprinted on Slanted Flying website with the permission of the author Sam Langley from his personal Blog.

Several years ago I read book called ‘Wanting enlightenment is a big mistake’. It was about the teachings of Korean Zen master Seung Sahn and written by one of his students . Central to the teachings was the importance of don’t know mind. Master Seung Sahn was against the books publication and described it as poison. I think his point was that reading, talking and thinking about Zen would only further delude and distract people from the real practice.

Many wise people have expressed the importance of ‘Don’t know’ in different ways. Socrates realised that true wisdom came from knowing one knew nothing, Chuang Tzu couldn’t determine whether he was man dreaming about being a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming about being a man and many centuries later Robert Anton Wilson asserted that ‘Belief is the death of intelligence’.

It seems to me that human beings are seldom just being, we are constantly thinking, talking and doing. Which is fine….But it means we are never at peace. I think the majority of people experience a constant level of mild anxiety which is only relieved by alcohol and television. The default setting for a human seems to be one of restlessness.

Meditation is supposed to help but what IS meditation? Our mind is constantly busy, thinking thinking thinking, conceptualizing and judging. In Buddhism they call this monkey mind. The monkey mind always wants something to do, so to calm the mind we need to give it something to do. In this way anything that requires focused attention could conceivably be called meditation. Not all activities are equally conducive to meditation however and the mind soon becomes restless again. Within many eastern traditional forms of meditation, particular attention is placed upon posture and relaxation.

Tai Chi is a particularly good method as we focus on the whole body. The monkey mind always has something to occupy it because there’s always something to adjust. Initially Tai Chi seems difficult, the legs hurt , the moves are complex and the mind wants to give up. But the fact that it’s difficult is what makes it such a good practice. If your legs hurt while your doing standing Qigong, you are in the moment experiencing that feeling, that’s real meditation!

Whilst meditating we drop into the state of ‘Don’t know’ we have moments where we are no longer conceptualizing. To start with these moments are brief and then become longer. Once you can bring your focus into the body for long periods the mind will become very calm.

Even just trying to bring the concept of ‘don’t know’ into your life can be helpful. It creates a wonderful feeling of release to admit on a regular basis that you don’t know. I myself like being right. I like a good debate and often make my point vigorously. More and more I find that need to be right lessening, after all I don’t really know what I’m talking about. Most people don’t know what they’re talking about either.

The problem arises with language. We are trapped by words. Robert Anton Wilson was opposed to using the word ‘IS’ which in his view gave rise to all conflict and misunderstanding in the world. By removing IS from your speech you suddenly sound a lot more reasonable – ‘The grass is green’ or ‘The grass appears to be green’

There’s no scientific evidence that Ghosts exist which leads some people to conclude that they therefore definitely don’t. I think it’s more reasonable to say that we don’t know, but that doesn’t satisfy the desire in most people to have an opinion, to know if something exists or it doesn’t, yes or no.
I have a feeling that peace of mind exists between yes and no, between yin and yang and that this place between the poles is the non judgmental feeling of don’t know mind.

November 10, 2016
Teaching Yourself

The article Teaching Yourself is reprinted on Slanted Flying website with the permission of the author Sam Langley from his personal Blog.

If you want to learn Tai Chi you need to have a teacher, hopefully a good one.

You can’t simply copy the movements from a video or read about the principles in a book and expect to gain any skill whatsoever. Once you have found a teacher however, you need to practice what you’ve been shown on your own and this is the only way to learn Tai Chi.

Through regular solo practice you learn how to teach yourself. Students who go to classes regularly but don’t practice on their own make little real progress. This is because real Tai Chi is a very difficult art to understand. You can only penetrate it’s mystery on your own.

When you practice on your own you are learning how to feel what’s going on in your body. In Tai Chi we want to move the whole body together as one, how can you learn to do that. Well, go and find out in your own time.

Although regular time with a good teacher is vital, you may find that more and more you are able to answer your own questions.

If you are enthusiastic about Tai Chi it’s fun to talk about and I used to take every opportunity to bombard my teacher with questions. I think it’s good to have an inquiring mind and I could happily chat all night to my teacher or anyone else who has wisdom to impart. These days I ask less questions and practice more. I feel confident enough to figure things out on my own. If I have a question about some aspect of Tai Chi I’d rather see if I can work it out myself. If I do ask about something it’s often to check that what I’ve discovered is correct.

Too many questions and too much talk about Tai Chi can actually impair your ability to listen. As your mind becomes quieter, your intuition gets stronger and the solutions come to you unhindered. That happens in two ways, firstly you discover things yourself and secondly you are more open and receptive to advice.

As a teacher I am aware of how difficult it is to communicate the principles verbally. It’s all very well telling someone to relax, to sink the weight into the legs and the move the whole body, they need to find out how to do that themselves.

Even when a highly skilled teacher physically corrects you, it’s still you that’s doing the feeling and the learning yourself. You could be training with Chen Xiaowang every week and unless you’re making an effort to understand what’s happening in your own body it would be a waste of time.

So in summary, whatever your reasons for doing Tai Chi… go and practice and learn how to teach yourself!

August 27, 2016
Humility

The article Humility is reprinted on Slanted Flying website with the permission of the author Sam Langley from his personal Blog.

If you practice Tai Chi regularly you probably have some sense of gradual improvement. Personally, I find that the better I get the more I practice, and it seems to me that an increase in Tai Chi skill makes you more aware of just how little skill you have. After 8 years of consistent practice I can feel that my body is more connected and more balanced, but at the same time I am increasingly aware of what I’m doing wrong.

Obviously, when we have those eureka moments during practice and a definite sense that we’ve achieved something It feels great. Those moments are in my experience invariably followed, at some point, by a realization that we’re not quite as good as we thought we were.

Anyone who is patient enough to continue practicing for a few years will probably develop a certain amount of humility as it is the only way to get anywhere with Tai Chi. To be regularly corrected by your instructor teaches humility. You start to realize that they can see a whole world of errors in what you’re doing but are only correcting one or two. When I teach beginners I find it best to only give one correction at a time. If you point out to a new student everything they’re doing wrong, chances are, you’ll never see them again. As time goes by, however, we can hopefully become more humble and accept more criticism.

Tai Chi is first and foremost a martial art. You can of course focus on the Qigong aspects and not engage so much in the martial side but I think you’ll miss out on a lot. If Tai Chi can be a spiritual endeavor, it is through dedicated practice of Tai Chi as a martial art. Some people are uncomfortable about practicing a martial art as they don’t want to be involved with anything violent. In my experience martial arts generally and Tai Chi in particular make people less violent. Only by gaining an awareness of our dormant aggressive and defensive tendencies can we overcome them.

Pushing hands exercises are often where we are forced to learn some humility. It becomes apparent early on that brute force hinders you and that only by listening to people and learning to lose over and over again will you get better.

Why do you want to get good at Tai Chi anyway? Do you want to look impressive in the park? Do you want to be really good at fighting? Is it an ego boost? I find it interesting to ponder these things, and regardless of ones initial reasons for taking up Tai Chi it does become something to do for the pure joy of doing it. My current reason for getting better is, I think, because the physical sensations are more satisfying the better one gets…..and in a way I’m starting to enjoy those moments of awareness that I’m not quite as good as I thought I was.

June 4, 2016
Why practice Tai Chi?

The article Why practice Tai Chi? is reprinted on Slanted Flying website with the permission of the author Sam Langley from his personal Blog.

Why practice Tai Chi? When I ask new students why they are interested in learning Tai Chi, they usually have difficulty coming up with an answer. Of course, the myriad benefits of Tai Chi are well known and one could say they want to improve their posture, balance and general well being. A few beginners are interested in the martial side of Tai Chi, although many are unaware it even exists! When I started learning Tai Chi I was dimly aware that it was a martial art, that it was supposedly very good for you and that it in some way involved meditation.

Before starting Tai Chi I’d had a growing feeling that I should start meditation. I could feel that my mind was restless somehow and that meditation was the answer. I tried meditating without instruction which I found very difficult. I read numerous books on Buddhism, Taoism and every other ism and they all said the same thing: Find a teacher and learn meditation.

I first tried Zen meditation. In the first zazen session we sat meditating for an hour! It was an extremely intense experience. Suddenly my mind turned inward and I became aware of my breathing, my heart rate, my posture and my mad churning thoughts. I liked the zen sitting meditation and although I didn’t go back I continued to practice fairly regularly.

Around the same time I started learning Tai Chi. As I practiced more and more I gradually stopped the sitting meditation. It became clear to me that all of Tai Chi is meditation. Whilst practicing standing meditation, silk reeling and Tai Chi form I found my mind becoming increasingly still and peaceful.

As time goes on and as I practice more I find my mind is calmer, not just while I’m practicing but all the time.

It is this aspect of Tai Chi that I believe people are most drawn to. Everyone wants peace of mind. Personally, I love the martial side of Tai chi and am a keen advocate of the health benefits but really what makes me practice every day is not the promise of super human martial ability, or that it will make me live longer but that it is in itself an experience of sublime tranquility.

May 20, 2016