What Do You Feel?

What are you feeling right now? Are you feeling warm or cold? Do you feel your heart pumping blood throughout your body? Do you feel air entering and escaping your lungs? Can you feel tension or relaxation in your muscles? You may answer yes or no to any of these questions, but many of us in the modern world pay little attention to these wonderful and important relationships with our own bodies. So what does "feeling" have to do with practicing tai chi? I'll answer that shortly, but first try a simple experiment.

Hold the one hand palm down just below your mouth and blow air gently over the back of your hand. Is your hand cold? Is the air warm? Release all other thoughts from your mind and focus on the feeling. In tai chi practice we focus on our mind-body connection through our sense of touch and attention to what we feel. Feeling the flow of air across our skin is just one example of mind-body experience.

To a newborn baby, the sense of touch is intense. Babies love the feeling of their mothers and fathers as they hold and play with them. As we get older, however, many of us rely on our eyes as the primary organs to sense our environment, and the sense of touch loses some of its importance.

In tai chi practice we strive to reconnect with our bodies and our physical feelings. Breath, muscle contraction and body position can be felt with each tai chi movement. We must also feel the flow of qi or universal life force energy throughout our bodies. Enhancing our mind-body connection and the flow of qi in our bodies is what tai chi is all about.