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Suffering
The slogan 'no pain, no gain' is often used in conjunction with
exercise.
Being healthy sounds like an ordeal.
But not everybody wants to sweat and strain their way
to fitness.
Pain
What is pain? Surely pain is a warning. Pain is your body suffering
damage. In tai chi you do not ignore your body and impose force. If you are in
pain, you are doing something incorrectly.
If you damage your body through exercise, you may have to live with it for the
rest of your life.
Competition
Tai chi is not concerned with competition. It advocates a different approach;
whereby the student addresses their own wellbeing and is compassionate towards
others.
By focussing upon your own mind and body, you can become calm and relaxed. If
somebody else wants to compete with you, so what?
Winning and losing are concepts best applied to games or sport, not living.
Competition causes suffering
Consider sport... Only the winner is happy at the end of a race. What about the
other competitors? They feel depressed, disheartened, frustrated, upset...
but why?
Emotional attachment
People become emotionally attached to the wrong things in life - 'winning' and
'losing' are no more real than any other form of measurement.
Running around a track is not the same as finding the cure for cancer. Will
videogame victories produce a better world? How many athletes suffer sports
injuries from pushing their bodies too far?
Imagine if the time, money and enthusiasm currently invested in sport was
applied to real-world problems such as diet, education, homelessness, animal
conservation and environmental concerns.
Combat
Most martial arts classes involve a fair amount of brutality and pain. This is
not unreasonable, since they are primarily concerned with violence.
Tai chi is different - it offers an alternative to pain and potential injury.
There seems little point in learning how to defend yourself if you get injured
in the process.
Explore
We encourage students to explore the way in which they are using their own body.
Working in relationship with other people is mutually beneficial. Training
tai chi is not a brutal process; there is no competition, no injury, no pain.
Pain is the sensation our body
uses to influence our judgement.
Pain tells us that something is not right - this is the most important aspect of
pain.
Resisting pain, such as masking it with painkillers, can make things worse.
The earliest symptoms of pain should be heeded.
(Philip Maffetone)
Page
created 18 August 1998
Last updated
16 June 2023
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