TaiChi HeartWork

T’ai Chi (which literally means Supreme Ultimate) is the name of the famous Taoist yin/yang symbol showing the light and dark principles curling around each other within a circle, each containing a seed of the other. For the ancient Chinese sages this was the principle underlying all processes; wherever there is movement or change or life then there is a dynamic interaction of two seemingly opposing energies, each coiling and twining around the other in a delicate yet charged balance.

T’ai Chi Ch’uan is a Chinese martial art (ch’uan means fist or boxing) based on the Taoist principle of yin/yang. A Tai Chi master is highly skilled at changing his energy in order to keep the processes with which he is involved alive and in balance. So if attacked by hard, aggressive, linear energy he will use a soft, yielding and turning energy to meet and neutralise it and will thereby be in a position to apply his own attack without opposition. Such skill takes many years to develop – the body needs to strengthen and soften, but more importantly the mind needs to be cleared of negative conditioning so that it can actively listen to the many energies that impinge. The famous Taoist saying is "Forget self and become one with the Tao". This is the spiritual side of Tai Chi: the abandoning of the isolated self in order to join with higher processes. The Chinese approach is a "graduated path to enlightenment": the student starts at the bottom and gradually, with correct teaching, talent and intelligence, and with diligent and devoted practice, works her way up the ladder until eventually, some time in the distant future, possibly even in another lifetime yet to come, spiritual enlightenment is achieved and the student is liberated.
In this modern age not many of us have the patience or the funds for this hermetic or monastic life. Luckily it is not necessary as a different approach to the graduated path is possible. It is possible to touch perfection and achieve "mini-enlightenments" each time we interact with another if it is done correctly.

Heartwork is the name we give to such interactions. It is an ancient body of teaching from the West (Ireland in particular) which encourages a passionate and abandoned heart-to-heart interaction between entities, thereby bringing about transformation and a developing and deepening connectedness. It has roots going back to pre-Celtic times. It is all to do with communication and interaction and acknowledges that when two people (or entities) properly communicate there is an energy present that cannot be conjured up by a person on their own. This energy we call the third heart. The symbol that perfectly depicts a heartwork interaction is the Newgrange triple spiral – two interacting spirals overlooked and joined by a larger beneficient spiral that nestles into both entities.