Ancient Medicine Modern World

Sometimes, Liu laoshi looks his 77 years. There is a slight hunch of the back, and a sense of tiredness seems to seep out of his sturdy frame.

Turn the conversation to Taichi, and it is as if a fresh spring blows through his bones. His eyes take on a starry night in the country glint, and there is a cat like quality to his movement. The thing I never to fail notice, especially when he brings life to the movements, is his smile. The absolute joy that radiates out of his being, as he finds that “no distance” place between his movements, and those of the universe.

Last summer when I went to visit him and his wife Jiang laoshi, I found that I could barely understand a word a he said. But, Jiang laoshi’s speech was clear and recognizable. This year it’s different, my ears have lost the frequency to make sense of Jiang laoshi. But, Liu laoshi, for the most part, there is meaning mixed in with all those rrrr’s.

I’m not sure Liu laoshi ever stops thinking about Taichi, it is a river from which he drinks deeply. We spend some afternoons drinking tea and discussing Taichi, as process of learning, as a method to better understand medicine, as a process of alchemical transformation.

There is something deeply deeply comforting to me about touching a process that takes years to begin to understand, and perhaps more than one lifetime to master. In our current world of instant messages, overnight delivery, fresh fruit from half way around the world, rapid weight loss, and ever expanding pharmacy of pills to alter our mood and feelings, it is reassuring to know there are pathways, that like good wine, whiskey or tea, require years to achieve their particular character.

Taichi is a process of continual refinement. Reach one level, and then you are ready for the challenge of a new understanding. Liu laoshi makes small corrections in my movements. An elbow dropped, a wrist raised just slightly higher, open the stance, move the intention from the hand to the shoulder, into the back and down the other leg and into the earth. The slightest of corrections at times, and it can either bring an opening in the back, like releasing the breath after swallowing a fit of anger, or bloom into red hot pain as leg muscles call fibers into play that have slept for years.

Too often I find myself winching and tight. And then hear his voice “relax, soften, soften….then move!”

And there is ever that smile of joy.