Tai Chi Equation in Stress Management

Whether or not I was conscious about it then, I now realize that the reason that drew me to learning Tai Chi is that intuitively, I knew that it holds the key to solving the many stressors in my life.

Even as a child, I have always exuded a façade of noticeable calmness, earning me a title of Mister at the age of 3. But truly it was a clever mask of being in control, to hide an inner tension emanating form a need to understand and control the forces that hinder my search for the elusive "happiness".

Albert Einstein, while declining a political position, remarked that "power and position can only be for a life time, but an equation . . . that is for eternity." My realizations in managing my stress up to this point in my learning journey can be summarized in simple equations:

Happy Life = (Learning from + Controlling/Balancing) Stress

and

Life = Stress = Chi

Presupposed here is that life necessarily implies stress. The force of life, which we call "chi" is the result of stress or tension caused by the intrinsic existence of polar opposites in everything. This is the "yin and yang" symbolized by the tai chi logo. True but apparently contradictory, everything in life is both polarizing (grouping into opposite positions) and complementing opposites (completing each other like "soul mates"). They cannot actually exist without the other, they are the two sides of the same coin. Perhaps this is an explanation for the popular expression of exasperation – "men/women, you can't live without them, you can't live with them". Right there is one of the intrinsic stressors in life, which aptly describes many of our fond relationships. Indeed, life does not exist without this rhythmic beeps alternating between these oppositions in our dualistic universe. Without this opposition, what we'll have is the flat monotone sound of death in the ICU's vital signs monitor.

So, for chi to come to life the tension and stress is an essential condition. There is the unwanted stress that gives us high blood pressure and cause us to pull our hair in desperation. A main cause of unwanted stress is a one sided view of and our tendency to oppose what can be termed our "negative others". These include everyone and every thing and every situation that happens to us that we don't like. This is something we avoid but seem to attract in our life. We go through the process of non-accepting, rejecting, defensively posturing against and denying them.

Through ta chi, I found it such a liberating and chi flowing experience to discover that there is a positive and essentially important reason for the existence of the "negative others" in life. And further, I can accept them as a unique, timely opportunity to learn about something that I cannot otherwise know about myself - a present item in the divine agenda for me to discover within my being that I need to integrate into my conscious awareness. It is the Universe's uniquely personal lesson at this very moment for me to upgrade myself for promotion into a higher level of being.

Of course, most of us know how very alive we feel when we find the "one" complementing opposite of our own being. This usually lead to the feeling of "being in love". It makes us feel so alive and "joyfully stressed". But, without being a pessimist, if one does not have the sensitivity and skill in balancing, this "high" would eventually swing like a pendulum to a crashing "low", a suffering state. This is a natural law that we cannot defy, but we can work with by learning the tai chi principles of grounding, sinking centering and balancing.

Controlling = Balancing

From learning tai chi came to me the realization that the grand ultimate in living is not being the "mostest" or the grandest but simply getting and staying in the golden centre of balance and spiralling upward while remaining balanced.

It is from this point of balance that we can control the dualistic, opposing and complementing nature of events to avoid being hurt by the swings. Otherwise, we would necessarily just be at the mercy of life's "unfeeling" laws. Without this necessary balance, people do come to realize that life is nothing more than suffering, that real happiness can exist only in the after life.

Of course, balancing is the art of tai chi which is a difficult skill to master. That is why we included in the equation the "learning" item. Life is eventually meaningless and empty without the joy of a sense of growing in wisdom and understanding.

From tai chi, I understood that our misery stems from the misunderstanding of the perspective in this equation. We wrongly cling to the idea that happiness lies in something in the future, a destination, an achievement to be "had in the future". Actually, it is not that it is not "there", but with that one sided perspective, "there" will always be something "there" and happiness will never be here, even when "there" is already "here".

It is an instantaneous satisfaction to accept that there is deep joy and ecstasy in letting go of this stressful clinging, and enjoying life as a challenging journey, a divine game of learning and finding a win-win-balance in the constant opposition that we encounter.

Tai chi gives us the metaphor in this game of life. The way of being balanced and centred in our posture and stances such that we hold the centre between up and down left and right, forward and backward, and in and out. An unattached awareness that gives an unbiased view and a non-violent option to a world that has lost its balance and left with no recourse except a predeliction for violence and dominance.

It is from this idea of balance where tai chi empowers us, that despite not being in the position of power, there is a way of leveraging for that tai chi position "to deflect a force of a thousand pounds with our minimum four ounces of strength".

In all of these, I found that theoretically at least, living could be negatively stressful. Or it could be a magical journey of learning and balancing- a learning to be and to do, an adventurous warrior path, a kungfu of delicate balancing where stress can be joyfully challenging.

~ESS/Manila Philippines/Copyright Pending