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Pick Stars and Replace the Dipper An Introduction to Qigong and Taijiquan by Eileen Nicol

How do you respond when that half-ton pickup cuts you off in traffic? Do you nourish the outrage? Do you recognize it? Do you breathe consciously? However you respond, do you feel better afterward, or worse?

Ever since humans have been competing for space and food and power, we have faced these kinds of choices. In Western civilizations, we still act as if dominance through force is the supreme answer. (Hence, the Hummer.) But in our hurried, fretful world, a different tradition from the East is gaining more students. Kim Ivy, owner of Embrace The Moon, provides some historical context for the taijiquan and qigong practices taught at her school by referring back to the Shaolin monks of China, whose monastery was founded in the sixth century. “They cultivated their martial arts form as a way of receiving and redirecting energy,” she explains. “For example, you don’t fight a flood. You have to create your landscape to accommodate the flood. Otherwise your crops die and your villagers starve.”

Taijiquan (also known as tai chi, or tai chi chuan) arose from more ancient studies of cultivating qi (pronounced “chee.”) In Chinese, qi literally means air, but here it refers to energy in the body. Gong means practice or study. “The idea of qigong really is to strengthen the body through the process of getting the energy and the blood moving,” says Kim. Moving energy through the body is done in three ways: with the mind, with movement and with the breath.

Qigong is an umbrella term for many forms and schools of movement, but every form has some component of all three of these ways, says Kim, although each may emphasize one over the other. A Zen Buddhist qigong might be a very still, seated practice, utilizing mainly the mind and breath. Embrace the Moon offers a course in an active qigong called “The 18 Hands of the Luohan Gong.” “A luohan is actually like a bodhisattva,” explains Kim, “a person who has really cultivated to the point where the next step is to become a Buddha.”

To a longtime yoga and meditation student like myself, this talk is like catnip to a cat, so when Kim invites me to attend a class, I soon find myself in her Ballard studio. The dark January night contrasts sharply with the warm light in the room, which is large enough to give the 14 women and seven men space to move comfortably. A few plants in the corners and some oriental screens make for a friendly atmosphere, and the lack of mirrors is comforting. To gather the breath and mind, we spend some time in a meditation stance, our backs straight but relaxed and shoulders dropped, concentrating on the lower abdomen or dan tien, a great source of power in qigong.

“I love it, but it can be hard, because it really does make you aware of how your mind is racing, how the rest of the day is still with you,” says Shelby Swanson, a three-year regular at Kim’s Luohan Gong class. After this centering time, Kim rearranges us so that we beginners can all see her, or an experienced practitioner, as we progress through a series of forms — smooth, connected motions named after animals and/or things in nature. “Topple Mountain Range with Palms.” “Standing Tiger Straightens His Back.” As in the practice of yoga, focusing on the body helps to still our oh-so-helpful left brain-centered egos. As Shelby puts it, “All those little thoughts of the day — you know, ‘Oh, we need broccoli’ or ‘Oh, gosh, I’ve got to get cat litter’ — those things fade away. It’s not so much about trying to push those thoughts out of your mind. You’re not forcing yourself to calm your mind. It just happens.” When the class is over my muscles, joints and ligaments tingle with the good stretch, and that night I sleep like a baby. “I always feel about two inches taller when I leave that class,” says Shelby. “It’s something I’m hoping to do when I’m 80.”

If so, she’ll have plenty of company. Increasingly, senior and retirement centers around the country offer some form of taijiquan. While visiting my parents recently, I had an opportunity to drag my mother to a tai chi chih class. This tai chi, with its 20 simplified movements, was adapted in the 1970s to be easily learned by Westerners. Doing “Bird Flaps its Wings” with this group of elders, some of whom practiced while seated in their chairs, was an inspiration and a privilege.

Kim Ivy says her elderly students, often people dealing with chronic pain from cancer treatments or fibromyalgia, benefit immensely from their practice. She remembers one woman recovering from a heart attack who remarked that she had never really felt she was “in her body” until she began the practice of taijiquan.

How many flavors of tai chi are there? When I asked the tai chi chih teacher, she laughed and answered, “As many as there are Chinese last names.” Generally, though, there are five main recognized schools, the oldest being the Chen school, and the most widely practiced being the Yang. (Embrace the Moon offers classes in both styles.) Taijiquan is influenced by Taoism and by Confucianism, with its emphasis on yin and yang, or pushing and pulling. It is considered a “soft” or internal martial art. While many of the primary forms are slow, some secondary forms in many of the popular schools are more vigorous. There are no uniforms or belts or rigid hierarchies. You can do it anywhere you can move and breathe.

The “use it or lose it” principle has intuitive appeal. Judging from the groups of devoted taijiquan practitioners in city parks, many are finding it a satisfying path to physical and mental health. According to a CDC study conducted in 2002, roughly 950,000 American adults have practiced some form of qigong in their lifetimes, and this number is increasing. Mainstream Western medicine is beginning to recognize the health benefits of these types of practices, so much so that the National Institutes of Health has formed the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine to perform and review controlled scientific studies about their efficacy.

It seems that a growing group of folks are looking for longevity, stress reduction and improved overall health, rather than a sculpted physique. Even in the roughly 20 years Kim has been teaching, she has seen a shift both in the demographic and the reasons people sign up for classes. Initially, her typical student was a woman in her 60s looking for relief from pain, or help in recovering from cancer. “And, indeed, practices really do help to address that,” says Kim. “They’re very good complementary medical practices.” But in the last four years, she says, the reasons given on her intake forms are usually “peace”; “a way of reducing stress”; and “gaining internal balance.”

“And the demographic has really expanded to include many more men,” continues Kim. She estimates her current female-to-male ratio as 60-40, where it used to be 90-10. “I think men are looking more towards what women have been researching. Women are naturally receptive even if we struggle with that because of the society we live in. We’re seeing so much change in our world right now that these practices I think embody or speak to this idea of receptivity, of slowing down, of listening, really listening and then responding from having listened. So many things we think we can learn intellectually, but part of why these practices work is because we learn through the body. Men and women are both seeing this now.”

So what will you do next time someone cuts you off in traffic? Will you unpack your favorite expletive and let it fly in the anonymity of your car? Or will you choose to simply breathe and let it go? “I think anyone benefits from finding an activity in which they slow down and breathe,” says Shelby. “Just being able to take that breath and literally feel the tension leaving my body. That’s something I’ve honed from my practice.” One thing is for certain: You WILL get another chance to practice. And you might as well take comfort in a familiar taijiquan saying: “The first 10,000 times don’t count.”

Eileen Nicol is a frequent contributor to Seattle Woman.

©2009 Caliope Publishing Company