A good stance and posture reflect a proper state of mind. - Morehei Ueshiba
Proper posture is a way of blending with gravity, proper attitude is a way of blending with life- Dan Millman
Posture is not only involved our relationship to gravity as well as our relationship to stillness and motion. Posture has great impact on digestion, breathing and even our emotions. In a profession that directly deals with the alignment of the body, I often speak of the relationship to posture and exercise, whether stretching or resistance training. Whatever we do as exercise is only as beneficial as the posture or form in which we do it. But our interest for self progress has to go beyond words and classes only. In Yoga for example, proper physical postures called asanas are important to practice not only in class, but every moment of the day. Such is true with Tai Chi posture, both of the mind and body.
We usually find ourselves in 3 postures throughout our day: sitting, standing and lying down. Lying down releases us from the powerful influences of gravity on our body and activates the parasympathetic nervous system. So this posture leads to unconsciousness and dreams. Standing maximizes the influence of gravity on the body and activates our sympathetic nervous system, directing alertness and action. Sitting actually activates both the sympathetic and parasympathetic, but to more a middle ground- lesser degree than standing or lying down. This balance between the other two postures lends itself to calm and meditation, aiding the mind in winding down.
We go through life as if moved by every force outside of ourselves, rather than acting from within our own choice or thinking. The world moves us. Relationships move us. We chase after whatever enters the mind. We are responding to the world constantly. Because we answer the demands of the outside world, we miss opportunities to better understand what the body does naturally. One thing is certain for many people, we seldom just stand. If you are honest in your observations, you will find yourself leaning against walls, on one hip, on your shopping cart, constantly moving and twisting yourself, even if you are practicing a routine of relaxation.
If you further observe yourself in these moments, paying attention to the subtle feelings in your body, you will notice tension, lack of quality breathing and even rapid or stressful thinking. Once we take a step forward, we since we are moving from an imbalanced posture, our movements will by clumsy and imbalanced. We might overstep our walk, wobble in even the most basic motions, walk on the balls of our feet or a combination of tense muscles accompanied by improperly rotated joints. To avoid this, check your standing posture first. Allow your weight to sink equally onto both feet and let your hands simply hang at your sides. If it is comfortable for you, let your palms face behind you and your shoulders drop. Be certain that your weight is sinking into the middle of your feet, not the balls of your feet or heels. Get the sense that the earth is supporting you. Once you maintain this posture, try engaging in conversations or reading etc. to see how long you can hold this posture without losing that subtle awareness.
To go further with this exercise, keeping your feet parallel to each other ,about shoulder width apart, with slightly bent knees. Keep your shoulders relaxed; your shoulder blades and even your chest. Adjust your coccyx (tailbone) so that is more or less pointing directly down toward the ground. When you accomplish this, the lower back arch will flatten itself out. Sense your lower back and sacrum connecting directly to your legs. Once you are in this posture, allow your attention to scan the entire body from top to bottom for unnecessary tension. Be sure you do not change your posture while scanning. All you want to do is observe and sense. Allow your breath to flow naturally, don't force it or control it. More importantly do not hold your breath.
When we can learn to find our natural and comfortable state in this posture, we can try a walking exercise. We want to use the awareness and sensitivity gained by standing, and keep it with us in motion. Walking can be seen and experienced as a profound activity. But the automaton like, restricted movements many call walking can do more harm than good. Besides stimulating our cardiovascular system, walking helps us relax as well as energizes us and reduces stress. Walking has a deep connection to the fluid rhythms of movement and breath.
For us to take the body awareness and sensitivity we gained through standing and put it in motion, we first have to observe how we walk. Spend some time with yourself, don't respond to and self judgments or thoughts of others, simply start walking daily and give all your attention to the process. Ask yourself, what is your motive for walking? Is your mind wandering or are you enjoying each step and breath of air you take? Where are you rushing to, and in the grand scheme of things does it really matter? So slow down! If you find yourself bouncing in your step, moving about, this might be because you are anxious which results in unnecessary tension in your body. This wastes energy and will exhaust you.
Allowing the body to remain open and stress free, the mind and the body move together. Continuing to observe your walking, pay attention to the range of your movements. Are your joints opening and closing by the swinging of your arms, allowing breath to enter the space in the body, or are you stiff, holding your shoulders back and restricting the movement of your arms? Do you think this represents a state of mind? What about your pelvis, does it move freely, opening and closing the joints or is it tight and rigid restricting movement of blood and lymph throughout the body.
Become aware of your feet, sense each food the moment it touches the ground. Ask yourself if the foot feels tight when it raises off the ground and lands. Do you land gently or hard? Do your feet land flat, more on the heel or ball? Do they roll from heel to toe? Being to sense your toes, experiment and play with the way your feet interact with the ground.
Chuang Tzu said " True human beings breathe with their heels, while the majority of us breathe with our throats." As you release tension in the body while walking you will feel your breathe reach deeper in your body. This can create a heightened state of mind as you sense new parts of yourself you seldom experience.
When I first entered my Tai Chi training, my cup was not overflowing, it was cracking from the overwhelming amount of misconceptions and misinformation I held about the art. My associations to words and theories did not allow my awareness to enter the body freely. My movements would meet the resistance of my knowing, and false truth would arise. I wanted to romanticize what I was doing. I was not just moving, I was expressing my chi, flowing, doing more than I could imagine. But why? Why did the mind have to indulge in the existential? Why could it not accept what was simply taking place without forming values or beliefs?
When we cannot see what is, and only see what takes place in the mind through knowing, we suffer from duality, and this creates imbalance in the mind. Over time I began to ache from my movements. My practice was resulting in tension in the body and no real improvement in my body. I eventually learned to let go. I am simply moving to move, as I walk just to walk- enjoying each movement and refining it like steel, to become stronger over time. I didn't need to stretch beyond my reach, to create more activity in the mind than what was actually taking place. I was desiring what I considered the deep and complex aspect of Tai Chi and movement. But the subtle is not less than the complex, small things make up big things.
The deeper happenings of the body and the mind while standing or moving are not dependent on our ability to know them. So when you stand or move, be present in your posture. Allow yourself to experience your place on this globe and in this time. Keep your mind open and free to the sensation of the body and let go of your knowing and cerebral fidgeting. Stand and know yourself, stand with yourself and stand yourself. Walk in consciousness and know each step can be a learning experience to get better acquainted with ourselves.
Think with your whole body- Taisen Deshimaru
Proper posture is a way of blending with gravity, proper attitude is a way of blending with life- Dan Millman
Posture is not only involved our relationship to gravity as well as our relationship to stillness and motion. Posture has great impact on digestion, breathing and even our emotions. In a profession that directly deals with the alignment of the body, I often speak of the relationship to posture and exercise, whether stretching or resistance training. Whatever we do as exercise is only as beneficial as the posture or form in which we do it. But our interest for self progress has to go beyond words and classes only. In Yoga for example, proper physical postures called asanas are important to practice not only in class, but every moment of the day. Such is true with Tai Chi posture, both of the mind and body.
We usually find ourselves in 3 postures throughout our day: sitting, standing and lying down. Lying down releases us from the powerful influences of gravity on our body and activates the parasympathetic nervous system. So this posture leads to unconsciousness and dreams. Standing maximizes the influence of gravity on the body and activates our sympathetic nervous system, directing alertness and action. Sitting actually activates both the sympathetic and parasympathetic, but to more a middle ground- lesser degree than standing or lying down. This balance between the other two postures lends itself to calm and meditation, aiding the mind in winding down.
We go through life as if moved by every force outside of ourselves, rather than acting from within our own choice or thinking. The world moves us. Relationships move us. We chase after whatever enters the mind. We are responding to the world constantly. Because we answer the demands of the outside world, we miss opportunities to better understand what the body does naturally. One thing is certain for many people, we seldom just stand. If you are honest in your observations, you will find yourself leaning against walls, on one hip, on your shopping cart, constantly moving and twisting yourself, even if you are practicing a routine of relaxation.
If you further observe yourself in these moments, paying attention to the subtle feelings in your body, you will notice tension, lack of quality breathing and even rapid or stressful thinking. Once we take a step forward, we since we are moving from an imbalanced posture, our movements will by clumsy and imbalanced. We might overstep our walk, wobble in even the most basic motions, walk on the balls of our feet or a combination of tense muscles accompanied by improperly rotated joints. To avoid this, check your standing posture first. Allow your weight to sink equally onto both feet and let your hands simply hang at your sides. If it is comfortable for you, let your palms face behind you and your shoulders drop. Be certain that your weight is sinking into the middle of your feet, not the balls of your feet or heels. Get the sense that the earth is supporting you. Once you maintain this posture, try engaging in conversations or reading etc. to see how long you can hold this posture without losing that subtle awareness.
To go further with this exercise, keeping your feet parallel to each other ,about shoulder width apart, with slightly bent knees. Keep your shoulders relaxed; your shoulder blades and even your chest. Adjust your coccyx (tailbone) so that is more or less pointing directly down toward the ground. When you accomplish this, the lower back arch will flatten itself out. Sense your lower back and sacrum connecting directly to your legs. Once you are in this posture, allow your attention to scan the entire body from top to bottom for unnecessary tension. Be sure you do not change your posture while scanning. All you want to do is observe and sense. Allow your breath to flow naturally, don't force it or control it. More importantly do not hold your breath.
When we can learn to find our natural and comfortable state in this posture, we can try a walking exercise. We want to use the awareness and sensitivity gained by standing, and keep it with us in motion. Walking can be seen and experienced as a profound activity. But the automaton like, restricted movements many call walking can do more harm than good. Besides stimulating our cardiovascular system, walking helps us relax as well as energizes us and reduces stress. Walking has a deep connection to the fluid rhythms of movement and breath.
For us to take the body awareness and sensitivity we gained through standing and put it in motion, we first have to observe how we walk. Spend some time with yourself, don't respond to and self judgments or thoughts of others, simply start walking daily and give all your attention to the process. Ask yourself, what is your motive for walking? Is your mind wandering or are you enjoying each step and breath of air you take? Where are you rushing to, and in the grand scheme of things does it really matter? So slow down! If you find yourself bouncing in your step, moving about, this might be because you are anxious which results in unnecessary tension in your body. This wastes energy and will exhaust you.
Allowing the body to remain open and stress free, the mind and the body move together. Continuing to observe your walking, pay attention to the range of your movements. Are your joints opening and closing by the swinging of your arms, allowing breath to enter the space in the body, or are you stiff, holding your shoulders back and restricting the movement of your arms? Do you think this represents a state of mind? What about your pelvis, does it move freely, opening and closing the joints or is it tight and rigid restricting movement of blood and lymph throughout the body.
Become aware of your feet, sense each food the moment it touches the ground. Ask yourself if the foot feels tight when it raises off the ground and lands. Do you land gently or hard? Do your feet land flat, more on the heel or ball? Do they roll from heel to toe? Being to sense your toes, experiment and play with the way your feet interact with the ground.
Chuang Tzu said " True human beings breathe with their heels, while the majority of us breathe with our throats." As you release tension in the body while walking you will feel your breathe reach deeper in your body. This can create a heightened state of mind as you sense new parts of yourself you seldom experience.
When I first entered my Tai Chi training, my cup was not overflowing, it was cracking from the overwhelming amount of misconceptions and misinformation I held about the art. My associations to words and theories did not allow my awareness to enter the body freely. My movements would meet the resistance of my knowing, and false truth would arise. I wanted to romanticize what I was doing. I was not just moving, I was expressing my chi, flowing, doing more than I could imagine. But why? Why did the mind have to indulge in the existential? Why could it not accept what was simply taking place without forming values or beliefs?
When we cannot see what is, and only see what takes place in the mind through knowing, we suffer from duality, and this creates imbalance in the mind. Over time I began to ache from my movements. My practice was resulting in tension in the body and no real improvement in my body. I eventually learned to let go. I am simply moving to move, as I walk just to walk- enjoying each movement and refining it like steel, to become stronger over time. I didn't need to stretch beyond my reach, to create more activity in the mind than what was actually taking place. I was desiring what I considered the deep and complex aspect of Tai Chi and movement. But the subtle is not less than the complex, small things make up big things.
The deeper happenings of the body and the mind while standing or moving are not dependent on our ability to know them. So when you stand or move, be present in your posture. Allow yourself to experience your place on this globe and in this time. Keep your mind open and free to the sensation of the body and let go of your knowing and cerebral fidgeting. Stand and know yourself, stand with yourself and stand yourself. Walk in consciousness and know each step can be a learning experience to get better acquainted with ourselves.
Think with your whole body- Taisen Deshimaru