Tai Chi Chuan - Body and Mind in Harmony

“What is past one cannot amend,
For the future one can always
provide.”
—From the Analects of Confucius

Is there anyone in the world whose idea of being truly healthy would not include, along with a healthy body, a fine mind combined with an ease of disposition? Fleeting glimpses of this feeling of harmony are experienced by everyone at some time in his life. In our colloquialisms we see revealed the inner clear relationship of mind and body. ”I feel as if I were floating” is a common expression to describe a peak of contentment of physical comfort. Well-being produces a sensation of lightness where the body is sensed but not felt. “I’m simply walking on air” is an image that almost obliterates the body and makes the spirit seem all powerful.

What an agony of indecision and what physical immobility are exposed in “I’m all tied up in knots.” “My heart stood still” expresses an anxiety that almost strangles the circulation. Composure and mental equilibrium can hardly be sustained in a weak and unhealthy system where discomfort dominates the consciousness.

The effect of body on mind and mind on body is in evidence at every turn of our lives every day. The realization of this fact is a step toward making an effort to find a technique that can “nourish the body and calm the spirit”—a technique that, as an exercise, can give action to thought, and, as a philosophy, can give thought to action, and which as a composite art is so synthesized as to make the whole greater than the sum of its intriguing parts.