In an episode of “Now Hear This,” a PBS series, the host, Scott Yoo, is with music students and asks them if they are worried about their future. Hesitantly, as if worried the question harbors a trick, a few students raise their hands, then more, and more join. Yoo nods, clearly sympathetic, but then tells them what they can do to stop that worry. “Practice!” He goes on to say that when you are practicing and doing your best to practice well you are not worried. You’re not thinking about the future and what it may hold, you’re not looking back to the past and mistakes you’ve made then, you’re simply concentrating on your instrument, the music score, your technique, listening, working hard.
Is it any different with tai chi or writing? These are my main occupations. With tai chi, the instrument is your body and your practice concerns moving that instrument as well as you can, following the “score” of a particular tai chi form. But your mind is part of that body, isn’t it? Visualizing the movements, talking yourself through the sequence, remembering what you’ve been taught. The mind and body make neurological connections and when you’re in that practice, really in it, there’s no room for worry.
With writing your instrument is thought/imagination/visualization/words/research sometimes, but also the whole nervous system that allows the mental activity to generate through the hands as they type or write. Whether it’s a letter, a poem, an essay, a grant, an article, a story, a journal entry–you’re IN it, and you are not worrying about the bills, an illness, an upcoming obligation.
Okay, folks. Practice your art, whatever it is and banish those worries!!