Tai Chi and conscious presence in our daily lives

Conscious presence and our personal history

Just as we spend time and pay full attention when we practice Tai Chi or Chi Kung, every thing we decide to do during the day deserves to dedicate time, attention and presence to it. Every event in our daily lives has the potential to be experienced under the influence of our personal history, or as an expression of our conscious presence.

The 'personal story mode' generally has impressions attached to it that generate emotions. Some are pleasant and others unpleasant. When emotions arise we find unpleasant, we tend to want to avoid them, to turn away, to not be there when they arrive. To try to escape we turned to our personal history. We investigated the situation by reference to similar situations in our past, interpreting the new situation according to our beliefs.

After this investigation we make a decision about how to act (or not act), with the intention of getting ahead and knowing how we are going to feel after all this happens. If the conclusion of our investigation is that we are going to come out well, we can feel a certain calm, but if the result of our forecast concludes that it is not going to be what we want, the internal sensation is of discomfort, negativity, anxiety, nervousness, sadness, anger,… etc. These sensations are not harmful in themselves, if we are able to wait to experience them at the right time.

Problem is these negative feelings begin to be experienced long before an expected event. In these cases, they settle in our mind, modifying the flow of thoughts and clouding our understanding of present reality. This tends to keep us upset for an indefinite period of time, and in some cases this state can become pathological.

Influence of Tai Chi in our daily activities

The practice of Tai Chi and Chi Kung progressively enables us, through the cultivation of our conscious presence in the now and in breathing, for better management and a more constructive and healthy relationship with our emotions, and with the sensations that arise from them.

During practice, we pay more attention to breathing, to what is happening here and now, and to the internal sensations produced by the movement. We do not give as much importance to ideas about how well or badly we are performing the movements, how pretty or ugly the outfit we use to practice is, or how annoying a noise coming from outside the room is.

In the same way, while we carry out our daily activities, if instead of paying attention to our personal history we focus on the activity we are doing right now, we may feel comfort or discomfort, vitality or heaviness, fluidity or effort, calm or acceleration, but we will realize that all of them are short-lived sensations.

Without the need to dodge them, we will avoid the need to keep these sensations in our mind to develop thoughts about how to escape them. In this way we will avoid constantly reviewing our personal history in order to draw conclusions and act accordingly. Becoming aware that at any moment the sensations will change, it is only necessary to experience them during the period of time in which they happen.