What it Means to be Strong

My daughter was studying for a Physics test, and I was helping her prepare for it.  One concept was equilibrium.  She demonstrated by pushing her hand down on the kitchen table and explaining that the force of the table pushing up against her hand equaled the force she was exerting.  So the net force was zero.

In effect, the table was strong enough to withstand her force.

It wasn't part of her study, but I explained that Albert Einstein assumed an inertial frame of reference in his Theory of Special Relativity.  That is, objects moved at constant speed, meaning that no force was acting on them to alter that speed or change their direction.

In one essential respect, the Theory of Special Relativity is an abstraction.  I argued that in reality there are actually a myriad of forces acting on any object and even with each other.  Our world, in other words, is a non-inertial frame of reference.  Isaac Newton posited this as one physical law:  An object in motion will go on to infinity, in a perfectly straight line, if no force acts on it.  Again, that's not our reality, as no such object can do that.

So what does it mean to be strong, and how does T'ai Chi come into the picture?

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Simply being strong means having enough force to withstand and overcome any sort of force we face, which we have to withstand and overcome.  It also means that if we don't have sufficient force in our reservoir, we work at getting more, building it, or engaging others' reservoir.

We may tap a universal source of energy, which isn't as esoteric as it may sound to some of us.  Recall the last time you were out on a sunny or windy day.  Depending on the temperature, that sunshine lifts our spirit, energizes our body, and prompts us to play a game, walk the dog, or simply just cavort in ways that children do.  That wind rushing on our face, too, can be such a refreshing thing that we can skip the coffee to wake us up or boost our alertness during a lunch break and launch us into a productive afternoon.

T'ai Chi is a (w)holistic exercise:  It's a complete workout for the body, the mind, and the spirit.

Physical strength

As all practitioners know, T'ai Chi is harder than it looks.  Yes, we must be wholly relaxed, and move gently and slowly.  But it requires, and therefore builds, strength in the legs - hips, knees, ankles and feet - in order to execute movements.

I remember a good friend from a long time ago.  He was a skilled Aikidoist, and he was very muscular and agile.  I had been practicing T'ai Chi for just a year, when he led us through a Qigong exercise.  His legs were shaking so much from the exertion, before the end of it, that he had to pause for a moment and loosen the tension out.  I remember being surprised to see someone so obviously strong to have physical difficulty with a form that seemed so easy to me.

That was an early lesson in how T'ai Chi can be deceptively easy and simple to do and at the same time be so powerful at building our body.

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Psychological strength

I was very shy and reserved through my childhood and adolescent years.  I was playful and friendly, but in the classroom and in social situations I was pretty hesitant to raise my hand and speak up.  In the year or two before I discovered T'ai Chi, I worked at improving myself via self-help books and tapes.  But it was T'ai Chi mainly that gave me strength of mind.

In Dubai, for example, there is a wealth of expatriots working at various companies.  One colleague had a great sense of humor, and he was fun and friendly in casual conversation.  But in business meetings, he can be quite outspoken, emotional and even offensive.  He sometimes came across as bullying or condescending, for example.  I don't argue for the sake of arguing, but one time I needed to confront him.  (Actually it was a number of times.)

You see, he's a British senior-manager, and a number of our colleagues were too polite or afraid to respond to him firmly.  But when he deserved to be confronted, I was not hesitant to step in.  He and I have had heated exchanges, for instance, in a meeting with the CEO, who clearly took it all in stride.

That's T'ai Chi having built up my mind over years of study and practice.

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Spiritual strength

My classmates and I grasped the Universal early on as a reservoir of infinite energy and strength.  We studied the Tao Te Ching, the well-known philosophical treatise by Lao Tzu, and learned about the way of nature and the way of virtue.  We practiced T'ai Chi to be on the Tao.

We came to appreciate that there were spiritual forces, not just physical, at play in the world and that we needed to build up a different sort of strength to withstand or overcome any noxious forces.  Call it fortitude, or moxie, or belief.  We learned and developed it in T'ai Chi.     

In T'ai Chi, we work at having whatever force we needed - physical, psychological and spiritual - to withstand and overcome negative forces.