Centering through movement

Every movement we do and body position we hold evokes a different state of mind. This is due partly to social images developed through years of social education and development. It is also partly due to the physiology of the body. Each posture we hold in the body evokes subtle changes in our minds. The mind both affects the body and is affected by the mind. A clear illustration of all of us is how our arm feels when we hold it above our heads for several hours.
It is not the purpose of this document to go into the physiology of the body but suffice it to say that body posture and body movement affects a state of mind. Movement-based Centering skills are known as soft forms or meditative forms. They can be used to enhance your Center, also to enhance any number of mental states.
A soft form such as Tai Chi in its most simple sense is a recording of a state of mind. When we want to learn a golf swing from a professional, we may well buy a video and study the technique. Then we will try to imitate it. When we have mastered the movement, we will begin to integrate it into our game. It will be the feel of the swing more than anything else that we will recall when we want to apply it.
Learning soft forms are just this way. A soft form evokes a certain state of mind. Actually, once the feeling behind the form is clearly known to the student, he/she will not even have to do the form to put themselves into the state of mind. To reach this level, however, may take students a long time.
If we look at the history of the soft form, we see that forms were for the most part created by monks for both physical and mental health. I often begin by teaching my beginning students soft forms rather than stationary meditation, because most are not used to sitting very still for long. They will often get frustrated at the inactivity. They are not used to it and will not know what to do with the emotional and mental energy that is generated.
Aside from being good body therapy, soft forms can be moving meditation. States of mind like emotions are internal. There are no objects or symbols in the outside world that I can use to directly describe them.
For example, try to describe the feeling of anger for a moment. By this, I mean not the results of anger or images that evoke it, but rather the actual feeling. We may well find it quite difficult. Most people will resort to descriptions along this line; it is like a fire, it is uncontrolled, it makes our body hurt, it is mindless.
These give us images that may contain components of the feeling, but they most certainly do not directly describe the feeling. If we were trying to describe anger to a person who had never felt it, they may well have a very different image of what anger is than we do.
If a master or a monk has a state of mind that he wants to relate to other people, one good way to do this is by developing a soft form. Like a musician develops a song to evoke certain feelings, he will put movements together in a rhythmic pattern that will evoke certain images, feelings, and thoughts. Many of these thoughts and feelings tend to be quite abstract. If you study movement at a deep enough level of consciousness, you will begin to discover that certain movements and series of movements will evoke specific feelings and states of mind.
When you understand and have a sensitivity to movement at this level you will begin to see distinct transitions and regions in the forms of Tai Chi. You will begin to see that different movements may evoke the same or similar states of mind, just like you may use very different words to describe the same event.