Relax - 2nd Essential Principle of RDTC

by Richard Farmer

This is the second of four articles detailing the four essential principles of living Tai Chi that make Rising Dragon Tai Chi special. Before I go on to explore the second principle in this series I would like to make something clear. For a long time I confused the principles with outer exercises. So the first principle was about the exercise we call Rooting and the second principle was about the exercise we call Sticking and so on. But as my understanding deepened it became clear that the principles were in fact qualities of being.

Just for a minute feel into how incredibly flexible, allowing, and creative nature is. Each of nature’s creations not only stays true to itself but is released enough to flow and be adaptable. The journey of a seed that germinates into a tree in all its glory, which in turn creates its own seeds that fall to the ground, before it, too, eventually dissolves back again into the earth, is one measure of this. It has a quality of surrender, of release, of innocence, of relaxation – this is the essence of the second principle.

So to review – to be present in our bodies is the first principle. To surrender or relax the tension of fear, doubt or any reactivity that clouds us, is the second principle. By being present and released we are free to choose any number of actions. In Tai Chi Chuan this principle is called 'Sung' or ‘Sinking’ and it is the ability to relax.

WHY IS THERE TENSION?

We need to relax because there is tension. We have tension in the body or the mind because we are armouring against something, we are resisting something. We are trying to create a wall between ‘me’ and ‘it’. So in life, you could say that when we relax this tension we let go of that armouring, leaving us with a quality of being undefended and so available in the present moment. Ask anyone if they feel safe in the world and often the reply mirrors an underlying sense of uncertainty and tension about being in this world.

FEAR OF NOT KNOWING

Personally I feel one reason for this feeling of uncertainty comes from the fear of not knowing. What do we really know? Do we know we will be alive tomorrow? No we don't. We can sense the probability that we will, but we don't know it for sure. Do we know what will happen in one week’s time? We can look in our diaries and see, but there is no guarantee that this will happen. In the face of this not knowing we try to control things and make ourselves feel safe and certain that things will be as we want or expect them to be. We take a position that tries to know. We become insistent and inflexible that this is how it will be, when it will be and who will be doing it.

We all know how old we are. Minute by minute of every day if someone asks you how old you are you are able to tell them exactly. I am 24 years and 10 months old. All of us carry this around. As a result of this we have a whole lot of ideas about that age, what we should look like and do and so on and so forth. Now just for a moment let yourself imagine what it would be like if you had no idea how old you were. Feel it now, feel the part that knows how old you are, and feel the part that just is. Intuit the difference and feel how you would be free of all those controls and ‘have to's’ that knowing how old you are brings. That which allows you to release from one to the other is the second principle.

Not knowing is very scary, so scary that we hide it very thoroughly from ourselves. However the body does not lie and that sense of control and tension is mirrored there. If you feel the muscles of a small child or baby you will feel that even as they use them, they are soft and pliable. The baby doesn't know it is Wednesday. It doesn't know that what it is resting in is called a bed. It doesn't know that it is 3 months old. But as we rightly go into the world and become part of the world we learn that it is Wednesday, my name is Richard, I am 54 years old and it is 2006 and my muscles are very different from the child's because of this.

RELAX THE BODY

So in the body the first way we can access the second principle is to bring a quality of relaxation to our muscles, to soften the muscles wherever we find tension. In Zen there is a saying that the face shows what you practise. It becomes what we practise. Actually so does the body. So we can begin to engage with the second principle by relaxing. You cannot do relaxation, but you can be it. Feel into the action of relaxing your shoulders. First, there is a moment of coming into that part of the body, of feeling - this is the first principle. You are aware of tension. You feel the discomfort of that tension. It is no good forcing the shoulders down because that does nothing. However you know they need to let go of something and out of that, if you watch carefully, relaxation happens naturally. This allowing that enables release is the second principle.

UNWRINKLE & RELAX THE MIND

The body is tense because the mind is tense. This relaxation of the mind I call 'unwrinkling'. When there is tension because the fear of not knowing, relax the mind. People often ask me questions about their life and I don't know the answers. As I acknowledge this, often in that release an answer comes from somewhere else and I know something I didn't know I knew.

When I think in a disconnected way my mind gets tense, my forehead creases with concentration and I separate from my body. But try right now to unwrinkle the creases in your forehead, just pass both your hands from the middle of your forehead out to the temples and afterwards feel how much smoother it feels. Try this inside the head: let those brain wrinkles smooth out. You will feel the wrinkles fall away and a sensation of melting, sinking and relaxation will occur. You may notice that the face feels smoother too and that internal tension or holding is eased.

WE CAN RELAX BECAUSE WE HAVE ROOT

A lake rests in the valley. It is completely relaxed. A hammock strung between two trees is totally released. The branches of a tree are suspended out from the trunk and just hang there. When we relax the mind, when the mind of thinking lies down, when it sinks, it can do so because it is held by embodiment of some kind. The water by the valley, and the branch by the tree. The first and second principle are bound together.

BE FLUID

I had a good friend called Robin and the best way to describe his energy is a kind of mad professor energy. He is the kind of man whose jacket is often not on straight, whose hair stands up and whose glasses are just about on his face. If Robin has a tie on it will end up above the collar looking like he is being lynched. The thing about Robin is that where most of us see straight ahead he sees round corners. Because he has fewer limits he roams more freely, and so discovers things that he brings back to the rest of us in the form of ideas and inventions. So one day Robin is in a phone box around midnight phoning South America because his own phone is out of order. You have to picture it! Standing in a red old-style phone box lit by a single overhead bulb, in the middle of the country in his striped pyjamas and dressing gown like something out of Harry Potter. He has a large bag of £1 coins in full view and is busily engaged. Along come a group of young lads out of the pub who see an old man and large bag of coins and think “Easy target”. They knock on the door and in his distracted way Robin just doesn't hear them. They begin to hammer on the door and demand the money. Robin angrily puts down the phone, opens the door and says in a loud pissed off voice, "Don't be stupid, can't you see I am making an important call to South America" and with that slams the door and continues with his conversation. The lads just melt away. It is not till he gets back into his own house that he realises what has happened. From a Tai Chi point of view, he embodied the second principle of fluid natural action. He was spontaneous because he was not restricted by the fear that the rest of us would have had. This allowed him to act naturally and that energy was heard by the lads who were then disarmed. Simple.

BE STILL

Another quality or aspect of the second principle is the ability to be still or stay with something. We call it ‘Sticking’ in Tai Chi. In a real meditation for instance, the ability to concentrate does not arise out of effort, it arises out of the ability to relax the struggle to do something. This struggle distances us from the moment and it creates tension. To rest in the present cannot be achieved by force and will. This will break sooner or later. But to let the mind rest in the moment from a place of release allows the moment to come. As we meet this moment directly, just as it is, without tension and with openness, we become still. In this stillness there is great aliveness.

I had a student who lived in Scotland. At the time he did a lot of driving from North to South. After a seminar in the South he decided to practise an unwrinkled mind on the way home to Scotland. Normally he would have to take breaks and often would get tense and tired sometimes resulting in headaches. He phoned me up ecstatic at the result of driving with a fluid unwrinkled mind. He did not get tired and enjoyed the journey, arriving fresh and ready. He has since taken this one principle and applied it because it works in many areas of his life. You can do this.

RELEASE FORM & FIND FORM

When we apply the second principle to the Form what happens? Normally we are so busy doing Tai Chi that we cannot feel the Form. Very early on, because we don’t know how to do Tai Chi, we “tell” ourselves how to do it, we give ourselves instructions – this makes our mind tense. Because of this we use force and control and so our muscles become tense. It becomes a habit and one day our experience of Tai Chi Form is just empty and we give up. If we allow the second principle to be present, we relax this. We allow movement and see that each posture has an arising, a coming into fullness and a dissolving ready for the next one. As you play a Form, if you allow this through release, the Form will show itself. Each posture will show itself to you.

TO SUM UP

There is a line in the Tao Te Ching which says "The hardest thing in the world can be overcome by the softest thing". There is another verse which says "Stand with your back to the female and know the male". To know the world we need to rest our backs on the receptive. The second principle has the energy of the feminine, of release, of saying “Yes”, of becoming available enough to know something.

If we look at how a bud comes into existence we see that there is a principle of allowing which invites a movement. How else would it move through the skin of the tree? The bud follows its nature, not knowing, as it were. The wind too moves following its nature and it too does not know where it will go, moment by moment. Water does not hold to one form, as temperature and climate draw it to evaporate into a cloud to become rain, and then fall to join a river or become wetness in the earth. All of this fluidity, all of this creation happens because of the second principle. The principle of release. When this is applied things can move, can change. So the fear of not knowing can become excitement of possibility. The wall of self-protection can become the availability which connects. We can let go of control and be with things as they come, like a leaf in the river. We can allow a posture to arise and fall. We can feel its fullness and the openness that allows another one to come. As it is true of these things, so it can be true for us in our lives - these are some of the gifts of the second principle. Where there is tension and resistance in your Form or your Life, apply the second principle, relax, be still and be fluid.

index page: Winter 2006