My ninjas-
I love me some Chai Tea, but not nearly as much as I love Tai Chi. One is just a delicious warm drink and the other is a method for harnessing every single one of the hundreds of trillions of cells of your body into a powerful force of nature.
In other, Tai Chi would kick Chai Tea’s ass any day of the week. But there is so much more to it than just it’s martial applications.
I’ve been practicing Tai chi for 7 years, which makes me a complete beginner, but I’ve learned a lot from this powerful moving meditation – and I want to share it with you, cause ninjas love sharing…
Special thanks to Chelsea Pies for hosting our Video Shoot!
Ninja Super Powers Activate
The evidence on the benefits of Tai Chi (translation = supreme life force) and it’s precursor Qigong (translation = the practice of life-force) is overwhelming:
- sleep deeper, longer, and soundly.
- feel less pain, even from chronic diseases like arthritis.
- boost your immune system and avoid sickness (I haven’t missed a day of work from being sick in over a decade.)
- recover more quickly in-between intense workouts.
- increase balance, strength, and co-ordination.
- increased internal and external awareness.
It’s that last one that’s super ninja for real – the foundational ninja skill: awareness. To do anything and to change, we must first be aware.
Awareness is the primary input of the ninja, and spontaneous adaptation is the primary output. That’s when you get into all the super cool super-hero-like-powers that are much harder to quantify and document than the health benefits above, but are real nonetheless.
For instance, take…
Ninja Super Power: Body Radar
You are made of a symphony of hundreds of trillions of cells, all spontaneously self-organizing, self-replicating, and almost instantly communicating with each other – you are the most powerful and complicated piece of “technology” in the known universe.
And when you are aware enough to tune into and listen with/to the totality of your being – that beautiful buzzing conversation of trillions of cells – the voice in your gut and the language of the universe will speak through your feelings with clarity and you’ll know exactly what to do.
That’s what happened the first time I laid eyes on my future wife.
Here’s my post where I described how I met my wife…
That part about my entire body vibrating? That’s body radar level 5 atomic meltdown status. Don’t get me wrong, it felt good, but it was intense – and I’d only felt similar things while meditating, never by looking at a complete stranger.
I have no doubt that my 15 years of meditation practice (I started meditating at age 16 and it helped me overcome a serious drug addiction) made me so sensitive and in tune with my feelings that it allowed my body to speak directly to me when destiny appeared.
Meditation, much like art, allows you to feel the truth — to know the truth through your sensations.
“Meditative practices enhance our feeling states and capabilities. Your feeling component carries more information than intellectual thought.” Paul Chek
In other words, as you meditate more and more, you’ll be able to feel, sense, see, and know things that others don’t/can’t i.e. you will be aware/awake.
Tai Chi is a moving meditation that will help you develop these super sensory abilities – and more.
Working Out Vs. Working In
Movement, unfortunately, is equated with pain in our culture, thanks to the militarization of fitness. But not all movement has to be about energy expenditure. In fact, some kinds of movement are healing and facilitate energy accumulation: Tai Chi, Qigong, many kinds of meditation practices, and some kinds of yoga too.
Here is one of my mentors and personal heroes, Paul Chek, explaining exactly how “working in” works.
The awareness that fitness has been militarized – and that that has advantages and disadvantages – is finally catching on. I wrote about this on my website, and when Greatist.com re-posted it, it went super sonic viral and now has almost 75,000 shares.
Don’t destroy your body in pursuit of fitness. That’s plain dumb.
Any Questions About Tai Chi?
Do you know how to heal your body through gentle movement and breathing? Are you willing to work on your ability to calm yourself down, and not just getting yourself worked up? Balance, my ninjas! With balance, we become unstoppable, and even the mountains and cloudless sky will reverberate to the sound of our purpose.
As always, TrainDeep.
___/|\___
Jonathan
Photo: Layla Studio