In many Chinese martial arts you find the principle of balanced, reversible movement. To explain, imagine that while in motion, at any moment your body can either stop, or change to move in any direction – which includes the reverse of your current direction.
If you can move this way then you are most able to utilise any opening a partner gives you, adjust to their attacks, or flow around their defenses. You can move swiftly and catch opportunities, in combat and in life.
Without this quality of movement you will waste time organising your body, and getting yourself balanced before you can move.
Recently I have been searching for a new apartment packing boxes and moving house. During this time, when I had many half filled boxes and no place to take them yet a friend in Asia offered me some very interesting work. I had the chance to fulfill a dream that I first had when living in Taiwan in the early 1990’s. I really wanted to go for it…
…but in my situation I needed to reorganise myself before I could make the most of the offer. To leap for it in the situation I was in would have left me overextended and unbalanced. My boxes, family and business responsibilities would have tripped me up as soon as I tried to move. It was frustrating.
For a moment I imagined the blissful lightness that would come from jettisoning all the extra weight. I could streamline back to a simple monkish life, a small rucksack in a bare apartment. A life poised to move in any direction at any moment.
But there are parts of my life that I am not willing to jettison, and I remembered the pleasure of training with weapons. There is a challenge and satisfaction to maintain balanced, reversible movement in conjunction with the momentum of an external object. If the weight of the wepaon is connected to and in harmony with your centre then you can swing it and change its direction with ease and elegance. A more complicated life need not be an encumbrance.
This principle of movement is ingrained in my body, and I am learning to extend it through my life. I can feel if some part of my life is getting overextended, out of line and pulling me off balance. Then I can make the adjustments that I need. How does that part relate to my centre? Can I adjust and bring it into harmony with my centre and direction? Or does it actually bear little relation to where I need to go and so is easy to drop?
It does not matter whether the parts are possessions, paperwork, ideas, relationships or desires – if they do not relate to your centre, your core values, your highest goals then they will make what could be a dance into a struggle.
Where are the unbalancing pulls in your life? Can you let them go or bring them back into line with your centre?
