When I practice t’ai chi outdoors, the experience is unpredictable. That’s always good for learning something…I just never know what. By keeping the door of my mind slightly ajar, I receive a lesson in being in the moment, living with distractions, and maximizing the opportunity to learn something new.
Our brains are designed to function with a set of assumptions and routines running in the background, leaving room in the foreground for nimble, in-the-moment action. Sometimes, distractions are experienced as events which interrupt that background “routine.” Then the active part of the brain wades in, deciding whether to react, and if so, what to do.
Practicing t’ai chi outdoors is like a laboratory experiment in working with distraction. When we’re out there in the moment, moving through the form, there’s a movie of distractions playing all around us: garbage trucks, soft breezes, yellow jackets, sparkling dew, drifting clouds, barking dogs…each one trying to compete for a spot in the brain’s foreground.
Then there are all the signals coming in from the actual t’ai chi practice. For example, a step down, heel-ball-toe, can be a little more unpredictable on the ground than on a floor. The foot intuitively understands this; it’s almost like going back to the reflexive response of an infant, curling its toes when someone strokes the bottom of its foot. Or the little grip that happens when walking on soft sand. The foot has its own curiosity about the surface being stepped on, an openness to the immediate experience. The same goes for the hands in outdoor t’ai chi practice; they instinctively interact with the breeze. Try this with the movement of Waving Arms Like Clouds; feel the fingers painting a gently swirling pattern through the moving air.
Going back to the idea of being open, there is always a chance to experience outdoor distractions to benefit the t’ai chi practice. When things get too invasive, I conjure up the metaphor of watching a movie. Like an individual frame in the movie’s sequence, it goes by, it’s in my field of awareness, then it’s gone. Most of the time, the invasive distraction doesn’t require me to actually do something to deal with it.
Conversely, there are “good distractions” that have the potential for enhancing the practice, but I must be careful not to get too caught up. For example, those delicious air currents, swirling past my fingertips in the Cloud Arms sequence. They are so captivating that I lose count of the parallel steps. My shadow on the damp grass looks so graceful…but where is it when I turn a quarter of the way around the circle? Those good distractions need to be filtered as well.
Overall, an attitude of “live and let live” is useful for my outdoor practice. It softens everything just enough to keep my active brain from being too reactive, jumping in too fast and disconnecting me from the sequence. I start with three opening breaths, and then, like the title of Colum McCann’s wonderful book, “Let the Great World Spin.”
