Tuck in Your Chin

A tai chi teacher will tell the students to "tuck in your chin" or "pull back your chin". What the heck does that mean? Our spine an essential part of our posture and our health. When your teacher talks about your chin, it's about posture. However, I have seen students get into some really grotesque postures when learning about this.

I have developed a simple technique to help students understand this. This takes some sensitivity, so I don't even mention this to beginners. Beginners don't have the ability to understand or even sense what is happening to their bodies.

Start by slouching a little bit, let your shoulders move forward, and bend your head a little bit. Now, straighten your head up a little bit and pull your chin back. This doesn't mean to push your whole head back. When you pull your chin back, let your head pivot around an axis near the top of the neck. This straightens out the upper part of your spine and your neck.

Your shoulders will feel some tension. Give in to the tension and let your shoulders pull back up. The crown of your head will naturally rise up. Now it makes sense to talk about a thread connecting the crown of your head to the heavens.

This improves your posture. And it's all because you tucked in your chin.

© 2013 Eric Borreson

Failure? Or Was it a Just a Small Gain?

I recently set a personal goal to practice my Soaring Crane qigong every day. No exceptions. That resolution lasted for 8 days before I missed a day of practice. I can claim a good excuse. I was in bed for the day sick with food poisoning. Nevertheless, missing a day this early in my marathon was a setback.

I got back on track the next day and kept counting days. I practiced the next 4 days and then missed one again. I can't even give a good reason for missing that day. I had plenty of time but I was just lazy that day. That's when I decided to write this.

There are two possible ways to think about this. First, most of us have a natural tendency to think the worst of a situation. My immediate response is to say that I am a failure at this, that I am incapable of following a plan. What's the matter with me? I teach tai chi. I ask my students to practice every day. Why can't I do it?

Upon reflection, I realized that using this kind of label for myself is very counter-productive. The problem with this negative self-talk is that it creates a negative self-image that de-motivates me.

Here is the second way to think about this situation. I am better off by regarding it as a small success. After all, I did practice for 8 in a row, missed a day, and then did it for the next 4 days. I did make some progress toward my goal. I practiced 12 days out of 14 days. That's 86%. It's not 100% like I wanted to achieve, but it's a whole lot better than I had been doing.

To counteract the negative self-talk, I plan to congratulate myself every time after I complete my forms. Completing the forms at all is time for a small internal celebration. So, I'm back in the saddle and planning on doing it again tomorrow.

Does anyone have any similar experience that you would like to share? I would like to hear how other people deal with situations like this. Please leave a comment.

Happy qi to you all.

© 2013 Eric Borreson

Note: I wrote this a week or so ago. I am up to 8 days in a row as I continue to work on this.

Karma Is Not Destiny

Do you want to change the world? A good way to do that is to understand what karma really means. A popular definition in the West is that Karma represents payback for bad deeds. It is used to mean that evil actions will somehow return to the doer. It is also used to mean fate or destiny.

However, that's not really what it means. Karma means actions, or deeds. It represents the total cycle of cause and effect (samsara). It cannot mean destiny because we have free will. We have a choice about how we act.

The three components of karma are seeds, intention, and action.

First, we have our own seeds, or history of actions and thoughts. These are patterns that we use to guide our actions. They can also be called memories or stories. They are our habitual response to certain situations. For example, when we are in a difficult conversation with some, we are likely to respond the same way as we did the last time we were in a similar situation. If we argued and screamed during the last conversation, we will probably do the same this time.

Second, we have intention. We have a purpose behind our actions. That purpose comes from our seeds. Buddhists use the terms "wholesome actions" and "unwholesome actions" to describe intention. Wholesome actions result in true happiness. Note that happiness does not include the temporary satisfaction of satisfying greed or selfishness. It refers to happiness from letting go of all the unhappy things in our life. Unwholesome actions result in unhappiness. This unhappiness may be masked by satisfying greed or selfishness, but acquiring stuff always results in unhappiness because you always want more. Note that this does not mean that money is bad or owning things is bad. That's another topic. More on that some time.

Third, we have action. This is what we actually do or say as a result of our seeds and intention.

Note that there is no such thing as "bad karma" or "good karma" because there is no such thing as good or bad. That's another big topic. More on that some time, too.

These three components (seeds, intention, and action) combine in our minds. When they are all unwholesome, the seeds for future unwholesome action are strengthened. We are more likely to do unwholesome things in the future.

When we learn how our minds truly work, we can learn to interrupt the cycle and avoid unwholesome actions. This weakens the unwholesome seeds and we are less likely to commit unwholesome actions in the future. The way to do this is through mindfulness meditation.

Let's look at karma from this point of view. We can look back and see all the decisions we made and actions we took in the past that put us where we are today. The decisions we make right now and the things we are doing right now will determine where we end up in the future. This is our karma.

Please choose wholesome things. You will be happier for it. And since we are all interconnected, the world will be better for it.

© 2013 Eric Borreson