A Few More Words … Seventh Month

A Few More Words …

When Does an Exercise Become a Cultivation Practice?

I’ve been thinking lately about what actually makes something a cultivation practice. We use words like Qigong, Taijiquan, meditation, and Internal Alchemy, and we often assume that because an exercise comes from one of these traditions, it’s automatically a cultivation practice. 

But it ain’t that simple.

You can learn a Qigong exercise without really cultivating anything. You can learn an entire Taijiquan form and spend years practicing it without necessarily developing the internal qualities that make Taijiquan what it is supposed to be.

So what makes the difference? The answer is refinement.

Learning the Practice Is Not the Same as Cultivating

When you first learn something, a lot is going on. You have to remember the movements. You have to figure out where your hands and feet go. You have to coordinate your breathing. You have to remember where you’re supposed to be focusing your mind. You have to listen to instructions and try to follow them.

That type of learning is necessary, but you can’t really settle into a practice while you’re still trying to remember how to do it.

I’ve experienced this myself countless times over the years, both as a student and as a teacher.

When you’re learning something new, your attention is occupied with the mechanics of the practice. You’re thinking about what comes next. You’re checking yourself. You’re trying to remember the instructions.

That’s not a problem. It’s a stage.

The problem comes, however, when we mistake that stage for the practice itself. The most important “stage” comes next: Refinement.

Refinement is where cultivation really begins.

Master Liang’s Approach

This is something I learned through Stuart from his teacher, Master T. T. Liang. Master Liang had learned from teachers in China and Taiwan who approached training in a much slower and more gradual way than was common when he began teaching Western students.

The emphasis was on building the foundation first, which is what all the classics, Stuart, and other good teachers say.

Usually, students are taught to spend a great deal of time with standing practices, supplementary exercises, meditation, stillness, and basic body training before moving very far into the forms.

It’s a logical approach. It’s simply building your foundation from the ground up. You don’t try to build the roof before the foundation is strong.

But Master Liang understood something about the people he was teaching in the West. He said that we need to see the big picture. We need to know what we’re learning. He knew we want to see where everything is going. We want to learn the form and understand how all the pieces fit together.

That’s just the way we are in many ways, and I think it’s even truer now than when he was teaching in the 70s and 80s.

Nowadays, we have access to an almost unimaginable amount of information. You can read a book, watch a video, take a course, look something up on your phone, and within a few minutes know at least something about almost any subject.

We’re used to seeing the whole map before we begin a journey.

Master Liang recognized that his Western students weren’t necessarily going to spend years doing standing practice before they were allowed to learn a form.

So he adapted his teaching.

As Stuart used to tell it, Master Liang would teach the forms relatively quickly and give students the big picture.

He joked that he would teach them fast (and cheaply) and then make his fortune on the refinements.

There’s some truth behind that joke, because once you’ve learned the form, you have something to work with. Something to actually refine, and that changes the entire learning process.

The Long Way Around

At first, this might seem like the opposite of traditional foundation training.

It’s not, though; it’s simply another way of arriving at the same place.

If you learn slowly from the beginning, you gradually build the foundation as you learn.

If you learn the larger practice first, you eventually have to go back and shore up the foundation through refinement.

Either way, the foundation has to get built.

You can’t skip it.

That’s one of the things I’ve come to appreciate more and more in my own teaching. Stuart inherited this approach from Master Liang, and it has become a natural part of how I teach.

We give people the big picture.

We teach them the methods.

We show them how the methods fit together.

We let them experience the whole practice.

Then we go back and refine.

And that second stage is where things really begin to change.

Refinement Is Where the Practice Becomes Yours

Think about learning the Taijiquan form. At first, you’re trying to remember the sequence. Then you learn the names of the postures. Then you learn how to transition from one posture to another. Eventually, you can do the whole form without having to think about what’s next.

That’s an accomplishment, but it isn’t the end of learning. It’s actually the beginning of a much deeper kind of learning.

Now you can begin to ask different questions.

Like, how can I relax more and relieve even more unnecessary tension? How can I tweak my stance, better distribute my weight, and improve my posture? How do I become more compact and internalized? How can I feel more rooted to the ground while also feeling lighter? How do I become aware of what is happening internally without interfering with it?

Those questions aren’t really about learning the form anymore. They’re about cultivating through the form.

The same thing happens with Qigong.

At first, you learn the exercise. Then you learn how to practice the exercise. Eventually, if you stay with it long enough, you begin to discover what the exercise is actually doing.

That’s a very different experience.

This Is Where My Weekly Qigong Class Is Now

This is exactly where I see my weekly Qigong class at the moment.

We’ve spent the last thirty-some classes learning.

I’ve introduced the various methods and shown how they can be combined into a “practice.” We’ve explored different ways of working with the body, breath, awareness, movement, stillness, and the other elements that make up the practice.

We’ve essentially been looking at the whole landscape because I want everyone to have the big picture.

But now we’re moving into something different. We’re going to refine.

That means we don’t need to be so concerned with learning something new every week. We need to make what we’ve already learned work.

That’s a different kind of practice.

When you’re following a guided practice and listening carefully to instructions, you’re still learning. You’re still using part of your mind to understand and follow what you’re being told to do.

But eventually, you want to be able to do the practice without all that instruction.

You want to know the method so well that you don’t have to think about the method.

You simply enter into it.

The body knows what to do, your breath settles, the mind becomes quiet, and you become absorbed in the practice.

Eventually, even the effort of practicing begins to fall away.

That’s what people mean when they talk about becoming effortless.

It’s very difficult to be completely effortless when you’re still trying to remember what you’re supposed to be doing.

There has to be a period of learning before there can be a period of deep refinement.

Refinement Is Not Doing More

This is another important distinction. Refinement is about doing less. You take something you’ve already learned and stay with it. You slow down. You pay attention. You focus on the simple things you couldn’t focus on before.

You discover all the little ways you are holding tension. You notice where your attention wanders. You realize all the thoughts you have about wanting to move on to something else.

At some point, though, you begin to recognize the difference between doing something and allowing something to happen. And this is where cultivation becomes very different from exercise.

Exercise is often about making something happen. You lift weight, stretch a muscle, perform the movement, and complete a workout.

Cultivation is more subtle.

You create the conditions and then calmly and patiently allow something to develop.

You Can’t Force Transformation

This may be the most important part of the whole idea.

You can’t practice transformation.

You can practice the method that creates the conditions for transformation, but you can’t force transformation itself.

That’s why cultivation is such an appropriate word.

A farmer doesn’t make a plant grow. The farmer prepares the soil, plants the seed, provides water, removes weeds, and makes sure the conditions are right.

Then the plant grows.

The same thing happens in cultivation: We practice. We refine. We settle down. We become more sensitive.

We remove unnecessary (or even conscious) effort.

We learn to stick with something. And then something begins to happen that we weren’t able to make happen by simply trying harder.

This is why I think refinement is really the heart of cultivation.

The foundation gives us the conditions.

The practice gives us the method.

But refinement is where the method begins to transform us.

The Foundation Is the Beginning. Refinement Is the Lifework.

A strong foundation is essential, but building your foundation isn’t something you simply finish. You don’t build the foundation and then move on to something more advanced. You keep refining the foundation throughout your practice.

That’s true whether you’re practicing Taijiquan, Qigong, meditation, or Internal Alchemy.

You return to the basics again and again, but you don’t return to them as the same person.

What was difficult ten years ago may now be obvious.

Something you couldn’t feel before suddenly becomes apparent.

Something that once required tremendous concentration becomes natural.

Something you once had to think about begins to happen without thought.

That’s refinement.

And that’s why these practices can remain interesting for an entire lifetime.

You aren’t trying to learn more and more things forever.

At some point, you begin to go deeper into what you’ve already learned. You take the movement/breath/method you know and refine it.

Gradually, the practice becomes less about what you’re doing and more about what is happening through the practice.

That’s when an exercise becomes cultivation.

The movements won’t look very different from the outside, but the difference can be profound.

And ultimately, that’s what a practice is for.

—Patrick