or Retraining the Sympathetic Nervous System
“Often, when we encounter challenges or tough situations, our initial reaction is to respond with worry or negative thoughts. This internal turmoil can make it seem like we’re addressing the issue, but in reality, it hinders our ability to effectively manage the situation, leading to frequent setbacks. The key to overcoming obstacles lies in first finding inner calm. It is only with a serene mind that we can uncover the solutions we seek. It’s important to remember that every challenge carries with it a solution. By maintaining tranquility, we enable ourselves to tap into our intuition and discover the answers that are waiting to be found.” [Source]
Unpleasant events
We could describe an ‘unpleasant event’ as something that happens to us that we perceive that we don’t want. There are many correlations between dealing with unpleasant events in life and certain exercises in tai chi, and I have found one exercise particularly useful.
When things ‘go wrong’ When something happens to us that we don’t expect or want, we can see it as something going wrong – not always, I know, but it is often the case. When this event happens, it can throw us; we become unsettled, we can freeze, we are thrown, upset, off-kilter, out of sorts, can even lose our way, or have had the carpet pulled from under our feet. All these expressions, ‘unsettled’, ‘thrown’, ‘upset’, ‘lost’ etc. all imply a loss of grounding or being attached to the planet.
Martial arts
All martial arts are partly about training you not to panic when something unexpected happens; you train your reflexes so that an unexpected movement by your opponent, or a push or punch, does not make you freeze, because freezing means that you have tensed up, and a tensed up, muscle-frozen person, literally becomes a push-over.
Reaction & the Sympathetic Nervous System ‘Re-action’ (repeating an action) is what we are attempting to bypass; in other words, repeating a response automatically in the same way that we responded previously – a gut re-action. We need to retrain our sympathetic (fight & flight) response so that we respond from calmness and a centred position, instead of a previously learned panic response.
Psychological & physical I’m interested in how you train an alteration to your state of mind when something unexpected happens. Automatic reflexes are good, but also suggest a deadening of the mind where you are no longer feeling and are not affected by the action of the other person, and perhaps only have a series of automatic ripostes to deal with the attack. This can be useful, but I think that the primary thing is to learn how not to freeze, or tense up… in other words, those milliseconds between the ‘event’ (for want of a better word), and the action that you end up taking.
Working with someone in tai chi
When you learn martial arts, you often do what is referred to as ‘partner-work’. Essentially this means that you work with someone else in the tai chi class, and has nothing to do with a ‘partner’ in the usual sense of someone with whom you have an emotional relationship. Your partner in this case is there to help you and, even when practising unbalancing techniques, is not there to compete with you (although I am aware that there are competitions to do precisely that).
A partner exercise to practise this This is where in-person classes are far superior to online – you have to make contact with someone else. You can do this either in a Bow stance facing your partner (both of you with one foot ahead of the other whilst facing each other), or in a high Riding Horse stance (feet side by side, a shoulder-width or more apart).
Simple version:
Partner 1 puts their hands on the shoulders/upper chest of Partner 2. Partner 1 does an immediate but gentle push. [The aim is not to push Partner 2 over, as in the picture, it is to give them something to work with]. Partner 2’s job initially is to relax their pelvis/small of back. [They ignore the push, knowing they are not going to be pushed over, and it is therefore ‘safe’. They go inside themselves, and loosen, allowing their weight to settle through their feet]. When you are pushed, if your body leans backwards from the waist during the gentle push, you haven’t relaxed in the small of the back, and you have probably spent time focusing on the push and its effect on you rather than on the sinking/settling of your tissues.
Developing it… When you find that you can manage this easily, you then add the rest of the spine & neck to the settling process (although the neck is a slightly more complicated matter as the releasing of it allows it to rise as it undoes).
The aim
The aim is to gradually increase the speed of our ability to centre and ground ourselves. Ideally we want to link the idea: Anything stressful = going inside yourself/collecting yourself/grounding/calming. But it needs practise so that we don’t instantly get the gut reaction of freezing (i.e. our energy rising or stagnating). It sounds easy, but breaking the habit of ‘re-action’ takes time.
Slightly more complicated version in a moving situation:
You use a standard pushing hands exercise where the backs of your (for example) right wrists are connected. If you like, but not essential, both partner’s left hands can be on each other’s right elbows.
Your feet can either be in Bow or Horse stance, as above.
Basic Push Hands Mechanics: As you push your right hand towards your partner, they turn their upper body to their right and your push is deflected. They then push towards you, and you turn to your right, therefore deflecting their push.
Splitting:At any point, one of you can use your left hand and slip it underneath your partner’s right arm. You remove their wrist from being attached to your right wrist, taking their right arm out to your left side (slightly), and then move both of your hands towards your partner placing your palms on their shoulders/upper chest (e.g. see man on right in picture). That person then does the gentle push.
To summarise, when something unexpected happens to you, instantly – before doing anything else – go inside yourself and feel who YOU are (this is called ‘Song’ in Chinese). Then you can deal with the world from the ground up. Work from YOUR relationship to the world, rather than resorting to patterns which means that the world/event is controlling you.
___________________________________________________ James Drewe teaches Tai Chi and Qigong in both London and in Kent and online. Details of weekly classes both live and online can be found on the website, and there are classes for 2-person Tai Chi on one Saturday a month. You can also learn both tai chi & qigong through a monthly subscription, and there are also many free videos on YouTube.
CONTACT: http://www.taiji.co.uk https://www.qigonghealth.co.uk Email: taijiandqigong@gmail.com Phone: 07836-710281 ___________________________________________________
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