Foundational Steps

The most difficult aspect of Tai Chi is the constant movement, even though most of the movements are slow. Each of the 108 short form postures is a series of flowing movements that continuously challenge balance, posture and body position. While there is always an opportunity to correct these foundations, I have often found myself one step behind; I've been slightly out of position and unable to explain why, even though I've been practicing these postures for more than a year. A few days ago I had an observational epiphany, which became a practical epiphany, and has strengthened my movements ever since. I was literally stepping with the wrong foot.

Since Tai Chi requires constant steps in various directions, movement isn't as simple as stepping with the left or the right. The angle of the step, the distance from one foot to the other, all play into the short form positions. Having spent most of my time focusing on angle and foot distance, I missed a core truth about Tai Chi movement. It's all about balance! Not balance as in achieving equality between right foot and left foot, but balance as in the ability to shift weight from one foot to the other while moving. This is incredibly easy to miss, especially if you have strong legs. The temptation with strength is to force the body into movement. Instead of flowing smoothly from posture to posture, from foot to foot, we end up flexing, holding and releasing; which is one step too many. There is a better, more efficient way.

Tai Chi is about emptying and filling. I empty one foot of weight and fill the other. I shift my weight into one leg, balance on that foot, move the other leg, then transfer my weight and balance on the foot I moved. This is extraordinarily simple! But I missed it because of all the distracting upper body motions. It's hard to think about our feet while thinking about our hands. So yes, it has taken me a year of practice to figure out how to correctly step and move my feet. It's not that I was putting my feet in the wrong positions, but I was stabilizing them incorrectly in those positions; I was not balanced. Balance is key to foundational movement. Not balance in the sense of equality, like balanced scales, but balance as the sense of emptying, filling and moving.

But how did I get to a place where I could think about my feet? How did I arrive at the conclusion that I was not moving the same way as the master? I didn't use mirrors to visually check my movements, rather I checked my difficulty of movement against his effortless flow; something had to be wrong, and I needed to figure out what it was.

Before I started thinking about balance, I started with posture, and I wasn't thinking about posture (spinal alignment) while practicing Tai Chi; I was thinking about it while weight lifting and doing boot camp. With my history of low back pain, stemming from a fallen arch in my left foot, I've learned a lot about strength and posture within the last three years. Foundationally, our body is a muscle. We can choose to strengthen it, prop it up, or do both. A healthy body does not need props, but a sick body does. A sick body needs external help, outside observations, and the occasional prop, to bring itself back into alignment. Once alignment is achieved, strength needs to be built in order for the body to maintain alignment. The health system I am most familiar with is all about external help and props, but it does not teach us how to be strong. And most of us don't ask, because building strength takes time. It's a slow activity; we'd rather do something else. We settle for someone else's advice and expertise, rather than digging into our foundational movements, comparing our movements to those who are healthy, and mirroring the movements of healthy people. I am for healthcare, as I have benefitted from healthcare providers, but there is a gap between those who rely on healthcare and those who are healthy. There will always be sick people in need of help, but we must own our bodies health or we will never be healthy. The study of posture has given me health. The practice of posture while lifting weights and moving quickly and diversely, has made me stronger and my health more secure. The greatest challenge of posture is to maintain alignment while moving. Building proper movement means slowing down, going at eighty percent, instead of one-hundred. At eighty percent we are still in conscious control of our bodies. At one-hundred percent we stop thinking, we just do. One-hundred percent is fun, but most of our injuries stem from going a hundred without the proper posture. We need to dial down our effort, take a little more time, take off a few weights and practice moving properly. It's not fun, and it almost feels like a waste of time, but it is worth the effort.

Achieving proper posture feels like this: doing multiple functional movements like running, squatting, dragging, pushing, jumping, planking and carrying. When we do these activities properly we feel it in our core muscles. Too often when exercising we do not engaging our abdominals, obliques, or spinal erectors in a way that functionally supports our movement. As we learn to engage these core muscles in our activity, our core muscles feel the burn; the idea of doing abs afterward sounds absurd, because our core muscles were already engaged and working. Proper functional movement engages the core and supports the spine. It doesn't cause pain, it eliminates pain. Which leads us to our last foundations: body position.

Exercising for an hour is only four percent of our day. The other ninety-six percent, how we position our bodies, plays a larger role in determining our health. How we walk, sit, sleep, what we wear on our feet impacts our posture and our balance. It's not enough to devote an hour of mindful exercise each day, we need to mindfully consider our environments. Are our habits supporting our health? Or are they taking away from the health we're trying to build? For example, I love taking naps. My favorite place to nap was a rug on my living room floor. Around a time I was taking more naps, I discovered my lower back was hurting more and more. More pain meant more naps, since I fully believe in resting sore muscles. Instead of getting better I got worse. One day I woke up from the floor and my lower back felt noticeably worse. I cut floor napping out. Soon my back started feeling better, and everything returned to normal. As a result I take less naps and have more time in my day. How we position and support our body matters, exercise isn't always the answer. How we position our bodies throughout the day, even while sleeping, impacts our overall health.

The most difficult aspect of healthy Christianity is the constant movement. Living and breathing Christianity requires observation, mindful movement, balance, proper alignment and good body position. Unhealthy Christianity requires no movement, no pondering, no risks. In other words, it is dead, because dead things don't move. Dead Christianity lives, because their are Christians who choose to lead dead lives. Our experience of Christians depends on whether they choose to live or be dead: to be healthy or unhealthy. To discover their own health and take charge of it, or to rely on props provided by others. Foundationally, Christians are supposed to move and be healthy, because they mirror their God.

The first description of God can be found in the opening words of the Bible, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." The Spirit of God, literally the breath of God, not only describes God as alive, but also moving, 'hovering over the face of the waters." The image here is one of an eagle riding a warm breeze. In all of the Bible, the LORD God is never described as stagnant, even when His Spirit rested on the Temple Solomon built. "a cloud filled the house of the LORD, so that the priests could not minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled the house of the LORD." God filled his house, the cloud is how he led the Israelites out of Egypt and to the Promised Land. God returned in the cloud after they established themselves as a people. It was His way of showing His people that He was still alive and active among them.

Fast forward a few hundred years, and several wicked kings, and the LORD is no longer pleased with His people. He's not pleased with the stagnant religion that's deadened the hearts of the followers who are called by His name. Even so, listen to how God deals with his people, "The LORD, the God of their fathers, sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. But they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words and scoffing at his prophets, until the wrath of the LORD rose against his people, until there was no remedy." God gives his people every chance to rebuild, to pursue health, until the very last moment. He keeps inviting them away and warning them of the path they are on, until it is too late:
"Therefore he brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who killed their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary and had no compassion on young man or virgin, old man or aged... And they burned the house of God and broke down the wall of Jerusalem and burned all its palaces with fire and destroyed all its precious vessels." At this point, God had already left the Temple; it was only a mass of religious-looking rocks. Even so, if we keep reading until the end of Second Chronicles we find hope, that even though God destroyed the place where people practiced in his name, he wasn't done with his people, "the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout his kingdom and also put it in writing, 'The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may the LORD his God be with him. Let him go up.' "

The final note of Second Chronicles is not one of anger and wrath, but of a chance at new life. That even what was deformed and dysfunctional can be renewed. Even though it seems like God is dead, because his people live dead lives or have all passed away, it isn't so. God is not tied to a building, He moves and breathes, even when we can't see him move or feel his breath. God is alive. He wants us to have life. He wants us to be healthy. He extends hands out to us to consider his ways, to live his movements, to learn how to shift our weight and stay in constant motion, even when it feels like we're moving very slowly and making no progress. It is in these moments that God is remaking us anew. He's stripping us of our bad habits, unhealthy environments and teaching us how to live again. This is the foundation God wants to build in us, even though its tiring and frustrating, it is the way of a healthy life. God's desire for us is to live healthy; its why his healthy followers are patiently persistent.