A body to remember

Some 25 years ago I worked as a volunteer in a place that you now would call something like a spiritual learning center but then we called it a safe haven for misfits. We organized all kinds of lectures and played videos from all kinds of Guru’s. We had workshops ranging from Trance Dance to Rebirthing and the Singing of Chakra’s. We opened the center up to teachers in Zen Meditation, Ikebana and Tai Chi. As a good little volunteer, who happened have a craving for the love and attention from the extremely handsome founder of the place, who I felt, hand picked me to volunteer. I plunged head first in all these meditations and altered states of awareness.

Every time I surfaced from one of these mind altering, spirit enhancing body checks I could see me drift further away from the handsome founder and could not see then that I was drifting closer and closer to myself. Instead I plunged back it to another rebirth session or bio energetic meditation. It was there that I first sat on a safu and counted my breath and found my first Tai Chi teacher.

Tai Chi was a course that was not very popular; people rather danced to jungle music with blindfolds on or scream their heads of in cathartic encounter groups. Being the good little volunteer that I was, I offered to “shepherd the course” as we called it. It involved all the hustle and bustle to get a course to run smoothly. So two nights a week I took care of the needs of the teacher, students and center and while I was there I learned some Tai Chi as well.

My teacher was a woman of not many word, she taught as she had been taught by her Chinese teachers and did not see the point in getting students enthusiastic, they either were or they were not. She saw herself merely as someone pointing at the moon and it was up to the students to gaze up. At a time where, in our western society, we wanted to be entertained, enthralled, persuade and encouraged I saw the group of students waver and slowly fall apart. As a good little shepherd I had no choice but to go to the Tai Chi class and it brought me a lot.

She taught “the form” and in the middle of “the routine” she would stop and you were supposed to hold that “stands”. She would walk around and “sculpted” her students in the right shape. At first I thought it was all about the esthetics of the stands and as a good little student I tried to hold on to the form she molded me in to, but after a minute standing like a statue I would feel my muscles burn and I’d flop back into a position that felt more comfortable. I could see the other students flop back too and talk amongst their selves about pork chops and the film they saw last night. Something in me knew that was not the way to get what she was teaching and as I had no where to go and the pork chops wavered in and out, I started to focus more on what she was telling my body when she was molding me into position. One evening she again gently straightened out my fingers, touched my shoulders lightly to tell them to relax, tugged my hips back to where they were supposed to be and there it was, total relaxation.

I could not belief the feeling of energy rushing through me totally free and unobstructed, breathing in and out with every fiber. I felt the power of complete body awareness and I knew that, if I wanted, I could stay in that stands for hours. I did not want to move for fear of losing that sensation, I could hear the talk of pork chops and desperately wanted to share this feeling of total freedom…..but that would mean I had to move and talk and I could not bring myself to do that. Besides I was not the teacher here, I was the student and as the shepherd I knew time was nearly up.

After class I told my teacher about my experience and she said: “now you have got a reference point, they are like little pearls, slowly but surely you will gather enough of them to string together. I saw the moon, I got the principle and now it was up to me to keep my awareness.

I use her lesson from then on and the pearls I found along the way in other disciplines like Aikido, sculpting and working with horses, made me aware how a raised shoulder can hold me back from feeling what I feel and how the flaring of my nostril can keep me from knowing what I need to know.

And when I lose sight of the moon I go back to basics, I plant my feet firmly on the ground and do a move that in Tai Chi is called the preparation. It only takes seconds to see again all the pearls I already have strung together and I smile when I hear all my teachers say: “Zen mind is beginners mind”