It’s been a very busy month and a half, with lots of great things happening but large demands on my time. This got me thinking about an important question: how we can maintain our practice amongst the changing dynamic, the ebb and flow, of our lives?

I remember many years ago how I reacted to my available time waxing and waning: unsurprisingly my practice waxed and waned as well. But whenever it waned, I generally reacted in one of two ways. Often I became discouraged and stopped practicing entirely (sometimes for weeks). Or I tried to maintain the exact same practice even though my circumstances were different, believing that to deviate represented failure. This always failed, and so I would berate myself for my failure, which generally led to self-directed anger and frustration. And that typically led to even less practice or stopping practice entirely (sometimes for weeks). I think you can see the pattern here.

The reality of an ebb and flow to our lives and its effect on our practice is universal. It’s something everyone confronts as they build a daily practice. Fighting the ebb and flow is a losing battle. Chinese philosophy might describe it as fighting yīn^† and yáng^†, the two primordial forces which relate to and transform into each other. Instead of fighting the yīn and yáng of our lives we can accept it. We let our practice adjust, practicing Tai Chi in the time we can find when things are busy, and enjoying the opportunity to spend more time when our other commitments are fewer.

This is another aspect of what the Classics refer to as “without disconnecting or resisting”¹. We don’t disconnect from our practice nor resist the demands of life to which we must yield. We continue to practice while accepting the demands that require our practice be different. The Classics also speak of Tai Chi has having no “discontinuities and continuities of form”², which includes not stopping and restarting our daily practice.

Mr. Lo revered perseverance as a cornerstone of good Tai Chi practice, as do I. The constant is quality daily practice, not exactly what we practice each day.

1 The Essence of T'ai Chi Ch'uan - The Literary Tradition; Annotated Edition; page 85
2 The Essence of T'ai Chi Ch'uan - The Literary Tradition; Annotated Edition; page 20
† If you have questions about Chinese terms used, you may find About Chinese Terms helpful.