It was one of those tangents from Sifu one class, the wisdom of which dawns on you only later. He was doing a long line-up on a Monday night, when he said:
Your form will change with you.
There have been so many phrases like this over the years. A few words carefully placed, at the right moment, that create a ripple through years of practice.
When you are sick, it will be small. When you are healthy, it will be large.
At first, I thought about this in a larger sense. As we go through life, our bodies are shaped by the impressions of experience. Injuries, like a fractured hip, a concussion, the loss of a loved one. But also a period of great sleep or a steady diet of healthy food, of the self-knowledge that comes with maturity, or the exhilaration of new love.
These experiences all leave marks on our bodies, changing the way we stand, the way our arms move through space, the way our hands touch the objects we use.
As the Tai Chi form moves through our bodies, our own unique expression of the form is shaped by the impressions of our lives.
∞
There is also more immediate layer to this teaching, which gets at one of the four Pillars of Tai Chi.
In our school, Tai Chi goes beyond the 86 movements of the form. Mr. Lee taught about the Four Pillars of Tai Chi Chuan: Exercise, Boxing, Medicine, and Philosophy. The medicine, I had thought, referred to massage and herbs for bruises and sprains. Sifu teaches these, and he and some of our instructors are acupuncturists and traditional Chinese medicine practitioners. These are specific medical practices in our tradition that treat injury and illness. There is a bigger picture here too.
Medicine, in its broader sense of healing and nurturing wellbeing, is woven through all the pillars of our Tai Chi tradition.
I have a story to illustrate what I mean.
A few years after I heard Sifu said this about the form changing depending on how you feel, I came down with a strange illness. One day out of nowhere, I couldn’t eat. As soon as any food went into my stomach, I threw it up. It felt like my stomach was closed. Nothing could pass through. I couldn’t stand up straight as if I was a rope knotted in the middle.
I was an acupuncture student at the time, so I tried needling myself but got nowhere with that. I tried herbal tea but I couldn’t keep it down.
This continued for days. I got weak. Very weak. I lost weight quickly, slept a lot, and stumbled as I walked.
By the third day, Sifu’s words rose up in my thoughts.
When you are sick, your form will be small.
I was surprised that it hadn’t occurred to me to try to do some Tai Chi. There are many stories of the old masters who were sick as children and regained their health because of Tai Chi. I had trouble imagining myself having the energy to do the form, and it honestly was hard for me to believe that a half hour of small movements would help me.
I put on sweats, and hobbled to a small driveway behind my building. I took three breaths, sent my hands out a few inches and up no higher than my chest. I followed the structure as best as I could, but my movements barely resembled the form I knew. After some time, I began to stand a little straighter and my movements opened up a little.
After doing the form, I went back inside, laid down and closed my eyes. When I woke up, I felt something that seemed like hunger. I ate a piece of bread. It stayed down. I had some soup and felt life returning to my body. The closed feeling in my stomach was gone.
Tai Chi is potent medicine.
When we are sick, we take small sips.
When we are stronger, we can drink deeply from the well.
∞
Henry Claflin is an instructor at Rising Sun School and an apprentice to Sifu Paul McCaughey. He has a private acupuncture practice in downtown Toronto. Read more of his writings at https://henryclaflin.com.