Welcome to Slow Peace Issue #24 : Gone To Practice: Avoiding The Trap Of Mind-Body Fundamentalism

Do I have the best style? The best teacher? The real, true, ultimate expression of my mind-body art? I have strong ideas about how my tradition should be but others in the community (especially the online community) disagree with me or don’t really understand and I feel the need to correct them. At what point does factionalism and the need to mythologize our mind-body art tip over into a fundamentalism that negatively effects the art and holds us back from progressing? The online environment is especially prone to manufacturing conflict and confusion, the last thing mind-body traditions should be about. What is the antidote? A drawing by the late tai chi master David Chen may have some answers. ALSO: A unique element of Cheng Man Ching’s tai chi is dong-dang (swing momentum) which not only benefits us in terms of health and energy but also connects us to the philosophy of the tao. Having defined dong-dang and the connected vertical axis we will now look at how swing-momentum manifests itself in the vertical and horizontal circles that generate all of the movements in the tai chi form.