Читать книгу Tai Chi: A practical approach to the ancient Chinese movement for health and well-being - Angus Clark - Страница 14
ОглавлениеONE OF THE first benefits of tai chi is a rapid and noticeable improvement in basic posture. Tai chi encourages students to key into the natural design of the body. It restores an awareness of alignments that enable the frame to function with greater ease and strength. Most children enjoy a natural relationship with the body, but as they grow up, some lose this freedom and begin to move awkwardly, or gradually forget how to move in a natural and unrestricted way. Exploring body mechanics helps mind and body to regain some of these lost abilities.
The body is flexible and mobile. Its frame is designed to enable it to sit, lie, stand, walk, run, jump, lift, and carry, and its postural alignment enables the body to perform its movements in a dynamic relationship with gravity.
The human frame is the structural system of skeleton, tendons, ligaments, and muscles, which give the body its shape and alignment when moving or still. The frame is not inert like the frame of a building, but kinetic. Each bone has its correct position in the skeleton, a certain range of movement, and a specific alignment with its neighboring bones, the tendons and ligaments that hold it in place, and the muscles that make its movement possible. The body works as a whole, so the misalignment of bones affects posture and movement.
Stooping and slumping, lifting heavy weights with the body wrongly aligned, aggressive exercise, and tension all affect the body’s frame. Years of such misuse can undermine its alignment, and this can result in back pain, headaches or migraines, and malfunctioning joints. However, the malfunctions that are caused by poor posture can be prevented and eased by realignment through tai chi.
Tai chi works with gravity, allowing it to anchor the body into the earth, working to restore the frame’s natural flexibility. It achieves this by relaxing muscles and releasing tension all over the body, allowing bones to resume their intended alignment relative to one another. Many people who learn tai chi feel a sense of strength that comes from having restored the body’s natural relationship with gravity and from the fact that bones and muscles that are correctly aligned can be exercised more effectively.
The spine is an excellent example of the body working as a holistic system. Its 33 bones or vertebrae are aligned in an s-shape and its two flexible curves, combined with the ability of the vertebrae to work separately yet together at the same time, give the back its marvelous mobility.
Incorrect alignment of the frame – the bones, joints, and muscles – can lead to structural problems such as slipped disks, back pain, and malfunctions of the joints. Tai chi teaches body awareness, so that good posture when lying, sitting, standing, and moving becomes natural.
STANDING LIKE A MOUNTAIN BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH
This exercise aims to raise awareness of the body’s physical support system, and of the relationship between the parts of the body and their alignment, from the feet on the earth to the head in the sky. The thighs and pelvis meet at the hip joint, the largest in the body. Your hip joints are being asked to “soften” and to open up or gently stretch. Your knees are sensitive to alignment. They act as channels, allowing the force of gravity to pass through. The position of the feet affects the alignment of the frame, which rises from them; and from them descends an imaginary channel that anchors the body to the earth center. Become aware of the relationship between your feet and legs and your upper body.
1 Stand comfortably with your feet well apart. Notice how and where the weight of your body comes down though your feet. Is it toward the toes or the heels, the instep or the outside of each foot, or somewhere in the middle?
2 Rock your weight slowly forward to the front of your feet and bring it back. Repeat two more times. When you stop, allow your feet to meet the earth fully, the weight evenly balanced.
3 Bring your weight to the instep. You immediately feel unwanted strain on your knees. They are misaligned and not designed to work properly in this position. Redistribute your weight evenly across your feet.
4 Realign your knees so they follow the direction of the feet. This maintains the correct relationship between the feet, the knees, and the hips. Feel it by dropping your spine a few inches. Look down to see that your kneecap follows the direction of the toes.
5 Stand upright again. Turn your feet to point slightly outward, and once again drop your spine and bend your knees. Check that your knees are in line with your toes. Notice the effect on your hips when doing this.
6 Keeping your legs and upper body still, rock your pelvis backward and forward, then from side to side. Feel your pelvis floating. Circle it a few times in each direction. The pelvic girdle is basin-shaped, a holder and carrier. Feel the link between your lower pelvis and your hip joints, and the relationship between your pelvis and your feet.
7 Dropping the spine and bending the knees softens and opens the hips. Repeat this movement a few times, allowing your hips to move and open. Feel the connection between feet, knees, and hips. Your feet are anchored to give you stability; your hips allow mobility. Now return your feet to parallel.
8 With your feet planted on the ground, your weight distributed evenly so your knees and toes are aligned, and your pelvis free to move, feel how the spine carries you up through your neck toward the sky. Drop your spine to sit into the earth, relax your muscles downward (yin) and simultaneously feel the upward and outward support of your bones (yang).
9 Lift your arms out a little way away from your body. Imagine your shoulder joints open, letting in space. Feel your arms lift farther out. Explore the movement possibilities of your elbows, then your wrists, then turn your fingertips toward each other. Imagine your arms are growing out from your spine, and make a connection between your fingers.
10 Direct your attention to the top of your head. Soften the muscles here and downward through your body. At the same time imagine the bones of your spine lifting you to this point. Feel the polarity between your feet in the earth and your head in the sky. This keeps your spine open or stretched up and down, so that it falls into its natural curved shape.
