Splitting your Awareness

[Anonymous]

Not sure if it’s ok to ask a 2nd question but i’ll put it out there anyway.

My tai chi instructor says that I should have my mind under the ground at all times throughout the form. On top of that there’s also the light awareness of the ba hui point, lower dantien, or whatever else we have to think about. There’s also the issue of moving your awareness where it seems that pretty much everyone brings their mind up when trying to create peng and hence breaks their root.

1) How do you approach having your awareness on multiple things? Just work on 1 until it becomes natural and you don’t have to think about it, then move to another? If so, what would the order of importance be for the various focus points?

2) If your chi follows your intent then clearly a percentage of your awareness must be going up to create peng. If I’m splitting my awareness then would the aim to gradually use less of a percentage on creating the movements and have as close to 100% on the root as possible (for martial arts)?

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

hi cameron
good question

it’s been my experience that as you work on these pieces, one element of the practice is to make something work right. you work a piece until your body does it easily and correctly.
this is the essence of seperate and combine, you work one piece that then goes into the larger form or whatever your working on.

another element of the practice is to develop your inner awareness. in this process, you feel a part of you, say your bai hui, until the awareness becomes constant and possibly even automatic. over time, your awareness of the bai hui point would be more and more. but awarness become more than just a point, it becomes a field. at that point, you can feel multiple things as if they were one thing. an example would be a lego death star; it’s got a lot of pieces, but when you look at it, you can also see the whole thing.

a fundamental goal in taoist meditation is to be able to clearly feel everything. so that would include your body, the earth, your environment, and ultimately the entire universe, all while your doing your form.. still workin on that one…

so as you get better and better at feeling the earth underneath you, you would at the same time be feeling your body. then when you do peng, you don’t really have to raise your awarness up, cause it’s already there…

hope this helps, and I hope others will share their experience or learning….

[Anonymous]

Yeah thanks that’s a good explanation.

[Author]

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