Absorbing fully into a martial form practice, a Qi Gong set, or even just paying attention to your posture and breathing patterns, is a simple and ever-available method to realise the real presence of the present.
Formally practising conscious movement and breathing translates into a more conscious and truthful experience of everyday life. You become more aware of how you’re acting and speaking, and spend less of your life “on autopilot”. In other words, it facilitates a state of being whereby you can act consciously, rather than just react, to events around you. You also become more attuned to the quality of your thoughts, words and actions.
As a result, you are less prone to mistakes, accidents, poor judgements, omissions, obsessions, confusion, and conflict. Furthermore, moving (or not moving) consciously can help create a sense of separation between “you, the quiet observer” and “you, who is identified with your own internal monologue”. As such, your whole experience of life becomes less delusional. By simply paying attention more, you can live more truthfully – more in harmony with your actual external and internal environments – and see things less and less through the lens of your own individual preferences and self-concept.
There are lots of other benefits, too. I think a daily routine of some kind of movement and stillness practice (whether that be Qi Gong, Baguazhang, Taijiquan, meditation, or some other martial art or embodied practice) improves concentration, self-discipline, self-confidence, peacefulness, patience, and generosity.
It encourages a more flexible and less controlling or compulsive approach to life; a more self-contained and content disposition that allows you to take things (including yourself!) less seriously. It invites you to let go. And, as well as increasing your sensitivity to your own state of mind and body, I would say it even heightens your sensitivity to that of others around you. It improves your intuition for empathy and for well-judged and honest communication.
There’s something of a paradox in that these practices are kind of self-absorbed on the face of it, but the result is a way of being that is less self-centred and actually benefits the people around you. I’m not trying to claim that hours spent navel-gazing in Nei Dan practice, or perfecting your Zheng Manqing, chain punches or mud-wading step, will solve the world’s problems; but they might just improve your own immediate environment and relationships.
More obviously, they help you to function optimally on a physical level, increase your energy levels, and (perhaps less obviously) help to smooth out your experiences on an emotional level. That’s got a lot to do with getting blood and Qi flowing, training fluid and precise movements, and taking full, even, calming breaths, as well as getting into the habit of turning your attention inwards instead of always looking outwards for stimulation and validation.
I definitely feel more relaxed, comfortable and balanced after practice. It gives me a sense of being stable and anchored, and helps to make life feel less overwhelming. In particular, calmly enduring yoga asanas or taking punches and joint locks, helps you to endure or roll with whatever life throws at you off the mat; they help you to be more humble, to be more at ease with yourself, and to be more acceptant and less inclined to push things away (or grab on to things) in a reactive or compulsive manner.
Through martial arts training you learn how to maintain calmness and clarity when under attack, you learn to be less fearful, to accept defeat graciously, to remain humble in victory, and to test things in reality instead of nurturing fantasies inside your own mind. All this translates directly into our social interactions with other people.
I think training martial forms can also translate into your own natural body language, and therefore into everyday social interactions also. Standing tall, a level gaze, expansive and space-filling gestures, open palms, and relaxed body language, all influence hugely how other people see us, and therefore how we interact with others, and as a result can directly influence and alter the things that happen for us in life, too.
Finally, by practising every day you can get a real sense of how your internal state changes over time, and it perhaps even helps you to become more at ease with change in general. And change is inevitable and inexorable, regardless of whether you want it or not.
We spend far too much of our lives “living in our heads”, and in my experience this only leads to self-deception and dissatisfaction. Eventually, it will result in disharmony and ill-health. By sinking your awareness into your body, you can begin to peel away your individual perspective, and experience the world as a perceiving rather than as a perceiver. This is a subtle but profound shift. Embodied practices can be, with perseverance, a powerful vehicle towards this transformative end.
This might seem high-minded or even far-fetched, but there is really nothing to lose; at the very least you will discover a more equanimous, self-directed and flexible outlook, and experience a more mobile, supple, and energised, healthy body.
Listening inwardly will probably bring everything you’ve kept buried into the spotlight at first, bringing things up that you thought were already dealt with, or perhaps weren’t even aware of at all. But with perseverance you can learn to recognise and accept what’s there, and move towards a more conscious existence.
By adopting regular mindful movement and stillness practices, we can train ourselves to inhabit our bodies more completely, become more aware, and live entirely more creative, open, and meaningful lives.
The Azure Dragon 