Brain work | ||
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Train your brain
Your brain directs the body. The stronger your brain, the better it works.
Success in tai chi requires a strong, pliable, flexible, adaptive brain.
Brain gym
People make an effort to go
running or to the gym. How much time and money do they
commit to their brain? Vanity is skin deep. Your brain is with you for life.
The root of ignorance itself is our mind’s habitual tendency to distraction.
(Sogyal Rinpoche)
More than just memory
Medical studies often focus on what
tai chi can do for memory and attention. But there is
so much more to it...
Brain work in the
syllabus includes:
Meditation
- being in the 'here and now'
- attention on what is happening
- cultivate tranquillity, stillness and silence
- not getting sucked into exoticism
- distinguishing between brain, mind, thoughts, emotions and reality
- concentration, focus and presence
Awareness
- your body, your thoughts, your emotions, pain
- people around you
- what is actually taking place
- cultivating a heightened level of awareness
- relationships, choice, perspective
Clarity
- seeing without bias, memories, expectations or opinion
- seeing what is actually taking place
- speaking truthfully, precisely and clearly
- the problem with media, mobile phones, internet, TV, gossip, news,
politics and 'received' knowledge
Composure
- taking responsibility for your emotions
- facing your demons
- remaining calm
- coping under pressure
- anxiety and anticipation
Metacognition
- thinking about thinking
- observing how you think, what you think, why you think it
- understanding consciousness, creativity, insight and learning
- dig a lot deeper than you thought possible or necessary
- Zen koan, the limitations of contemporary education
- cultivating exponential development
- spontaneity and change
Constructive reading
- reading non-fiction books
- exercise your mind by reading unfamiliar concepts, principles and ideas
- change attitudes, improve sensitivity, encourage insight and deepen
understanding
- spirituality, personal development, deliberate living
Memory
- expectations, performance, recall, learning
- the role of repetition and practice
- habits and familiarity, pros and cons of 'the known'
- contemplation
Rest
- the necessity of peace, quiet and space
- the benefits of stopping
- nutrition, diet, hydration
- the dangers of caffeine, nicotine and alcohol
Use it or lose it
According to the book The Willpower Instinct by Kelly
McGonigal, the human brain is quite literally akin to a muscle.
The more frequently and consistently your brain works on a given area of
skill, the greater its capacity to perform the skill with ease.
If you want your brain to be robust, fast, adaptive, flexible and strong you
need to challenge it in a variety of ways.
The range of awareness and efficiency of the
Taoist adept is
unnoticeable, imperceptible to others,
because their critical moments take place before ordinary intelligence has
mapped out a description of the situation.
By seeing opportunities before they are visible to others and being quick to
act,
the uncanny warrior can take situations by the throat before matters get out
of hand.
Conserving one's own energy while inducing others to dissipate theirs is
another function of the inscrutability so highly prized by the
Taoist
warrior.
He stresses change and surprise, employing endless variations of
tactics,
using opponent's psychological conditions to manoeuvre them into vulnerable
positions.
One of the purposes of Taoist literature is to help to develop this special
sensitivity and responsiveness to handle living situations.
The art of not-doing which includes the unobtrusiveness, unknowability, and
ungraspability at the core of esoteric Asian martial arts
- belongs to the branch of Taoism known as The Science
of the
Essence.
(Thomas Cleary)
Force versus intelligence
A common learning myth is that in order to succeed you should try harder.
This is not good advice. If something does not work, pushing harder is
futile.
It is better and more intelligent to approach the problem differently.
Your brain, your problem
Your tai chi teacher can only do so much. After all, they only see you
briefly each week and have very little capacity to change your life. It is
up to you to take the initiative.
Work on yourself...
If your brain matters to you, start looking after it. There is growing
evidence to suggest that a well exercised brain will last far longer than a
neglected one.
Consider the 3 approaches
to finding answers:
What sort of person
are you? Options 2 & 3 show initiative and personal
responsibility.
Don't leave it too late
People are quite reluctant to take responsibility for their own health. By
the time they realise that there is a problem the damage is done. Prevention
is smarter than damage control...
Don't let a lifestyle issue become a medical
problem.
News is irrelevant. In the
past twelve months you have probably consumed about 10,000 news snippets -
perhaps as many as 30 per day. Be very honest: name one of them, just one,
that helped you make a better decision - for your life, your career or your
business - compared with not having this piece of news. No one I have asked
has been able to name more than two useful news stories - out of 10,000. A
miserable result.
(Rolf Dobelli)
Page created
1 April 1996
Last updated
16 June 2023
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