being

centered around centers. networks.

/ Taoist philosophy in movement: Traditional Chinese bodymind practices with Ansgar Gerstner

centered around centers. networks: general 615

Physical experiences create feelings and thoughts. Thoughts and feelings create physical experiences. Since it is all connected, the one impacts the other. But this kind of circularity extends over all kinds of areas and dimensions. The way your environment makes you feel and experience yourself and the world (in the process of your socialization) shapes all parts of your (conscious and not conscious) existence, your body posture, the way you move, whether your inner organs work and interact with each other in more or less harmonious and balanced ways, your emotional and intellectual patterns (open and cooperative, manipulative,…), the ways you experience and treat yourself, others, and your environment in general,…

In the Taoist tradition, healthy developmental and healing processes are complexly integrative. Taoist philosophy, spirituality, and medicine are reinforcing each other in their practices. This is why in Taoist philosophy-inspired bodymind practices, you start in one or just a few areas that you try to connect better, and then expand the practice to include more and more areas in your being.

You start, for instance, by connecting hands and feet movements more complexly in your practices. This is, for instance, something I thoroughly pay attention to when doing the individual movements within the Shaolin method for transforming the tendons, the 少林易筋經. With the feet, you focus on feeling the support of the ground and the opportunities to receive energy providing impulses. You grow your „roots.“

more about roots

beings

/ Taoist philosophy in movement: Traditional Chinese bodymind practices with Ansgar Gerstner

beings: general #545

The essential material I work with in the traditional Chinese movement methods I practice and teach is basically just a couple of concepts—at least a pretty limited number of concepts. (1) At first sight, it might appear simplistic. It is not really complicated, and you can learn about and get to know these concepts in a comparatively short period of time. However, and this is significant, the simplicity of these concepts gains complexity through their profoundness and continual practice. As soon as you start to work with these essential concepts, you are basically on an open-ended path.

Of course, it is helpful to know a few (movement) forms and to be acquainted with differing formal approaches—as I started with the Wing Chun forms and then learned some others. This helps to formulate questions and offers different angles for answers. You need education in the basics, and you need guidance. But where does this guidance come from?

You need a teacher, or teachers, but we do not only learn from our fellow human beings. We also do not only learn from (what we generally call) other beings—animals, plants, … We can learn from rocks, mountains, streams, clouds, … We can learn from being itself. We can learn from the beating of our hearts. We can learn from our breathing, our digestion, … We should not be fixated on human beings, particularly not a very narrow understanding of human beings and their position.

We are so much more than a general body and a general mind. We are something inside of something larger as the kidneys are part of our bodies. We often exclude so much and are not inclusive enough. Seen like this, the „I“ appears as a strange idea, an illusion and distortion. When practicing (a traditional Chinese bodymind method), you experience that it makes sense to let go of an exclusive, and moreover narrow (human) self. (2) When practicing, you feel that, energetically, it makes sense to play one’s role in the larger units one is part of like a liver in a body. (3) When practicing, you experience that it completely makes sense to connect. (4) We are conglomerates within conglomerates within conglomerates within … Being, we are all beings.

When you practice a traditional Chinese movement method and you focus on dissolving (5) and connecting (6) in your daily practice, why would you rely on the ignorant arrogance of a narrow „I“? Why would we subordinate conglomerates to autocratic egos? The practice of a traditional Chinese bodymind method is fascinating and relevant. It takes us on meaningful and nourishing paths.

Notes:
(1) https://tao-moves.com/wing-chun_nei-kung/concepts/
(2) 損之又損, reducing/dissolving, Lao-tzu, chapter 48
(3) 自然, being such by itself, 無為, non-action—many quotes in the Lao-tzu
(4) 通, term regarding the flow of Ch’i in the movement traditions
(5) 損、散
(6) 抱一, Lao-tzu, chapter 22