The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin (Deep Book Summary)

This is a book summary of The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance by Josh Waitzkin (Amazon).

Quick Housekeeping:

All content in quotation marks is from the author (content not in quotations is paraphrased).
All content is organized into my own themes (not necessarily the author’s chapters).
Emphasis has been added in bold for readability/skimmability.

Book Summary Contents:

About the Book & Josh Waitzkin
Passion & Personality
Intelligence & Intuition
Mastery & Recovery
Process vs Goals & Depth vs Breadth
Adversity & Resilience
Balance & Flow
The Tao & Tai Chi

Art of Learning Josh Waitzkin Book Summary

**Inner Journey to Optimal Performance: The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin (Book Summary)**

About the Book & Josh Waitzkin

“What I have realized is that what I am best at is not Tai Chi, and it is not chess—what I am best at is the art of learning. This book is the story of my method.”

“Since I decided to write this book, I have analyzed myself, taken my knowledge apart, and rigorously investigated my own experience.”
“Over time I began to see the principles that have been silently guiding me, and a systematic methodology of learning emerged.”
“The same pattern can be seen when the art of learning is analyzed: themes can be internalized, lived by, and forgotten.”
“My fascination with consciousness, study of chess and Tai Chi, love for literature and the ocean, for meditation and philosophy, all coalesced around the theme of tapping into the mind’s potential via complete immersion into one and all activities. My growth became defined by barrierlessness. Pure concentration didn’t allow thoughts or false constructions to impede my awareness, and I observed clear connections between different life experiences through the common mode of consciousness by which they were perceived. As I cultivated openness to these connections, my life became flooded with intense learning experiences.”

Josh won the lottery of birth:

“My mom is my hero. Without her the whole thing falls apart.”
“In painful times, my mom has always been an anchor, holding everything together until the clouds roll by.”
“My mother is the greatest person I have ever known. She is a brilliant, loving, compassionate woman with a wisdom that to this day blows my mind. Quietly powerful, infinitely supportive, absurdly selfless, she has always encouraged me to follow my heart even when it led far away or to seemingly bizarre pursuits.”
“My father is a different type of character. He’s a loyal, emotional, eccentric … devoted dad who has been my best friend since day one.”
“It is true that I played with the knowledge that my dad’s heart was on the line side by side with my own—but I also knew that he would love me regardless of the outcome … One thing is for sure—through thick and thin, my dad has always been in my corner 100 percent.”

Key age milestones:

Young: “Even as a young boy I was encouraged to take part in the spirited dinner party debates about art and politics in my family’s living room. I was taught to express my opinion and to think about the ideas of others—not to follow authority blindly.”
6: “Rewind to those days when I was a 6-year-old prankster. Once he had won my confidence, Bruce began our study with a barren chessboard. We took on positions of reduced complexity and clear principles … Over time, I gained an excellent intuitive feel … I learned the principle of opposition, the hidden potency of empty space, the idea of zugzwang (putting your opponent in a position where any move he makes will destroy his position). Layer by layer we built up my knowledge and my understanding of how to transform axioms into fuel for creative insight.”
7-8: “…spending hundreds of hours as I turned 7 and 8 years old, exploring the operating principles behind positions that I might never see again. This method of study gave me a feeling for the beautiful subtleties … I was also gradually internalizing a marvelous methodology of learning—the play between knowledge, intuition, and creativity. From both educational and technical perspectives, I learned from the foundation up.”
8-9: “The ocean has always healed me, brought me back to life when I have needed it . . . and as an 8-year-old child in the midst of an existential crisis, I needed it … It might sound absurd, but I believe that year, from 8 to 9, was the defining period of my life. I responded to heartbreak with hard work. I was self-motivated and moved by a powerful resolve.”
12: “Since I was 12 years old I had kept journals of my chess study, making psychological observations along the way.”
18: “When I was 18 years old I stumbled upon a little book called the Tao Te Ching, and my life took a turn. I was moved by the book’s natural wisdom and I started delving into other Buddhist and Taoist philosophical texts. I recognized that being at the pinnacle in other people’s eyes had nothing to do with quality of life, and I was drawn to the potential for inner tranquility … For an 18-year-old boy, more than anything the Tao Te Ching provided a framework to help me sort out my complicated relationship to material ambition. It helped me figure out what was important apart from what we are told is important.”
19-20: “During these years I discovered a powerful new private relationship to chess. I worked on the game tirelessly, but was now moved less by ambition than by a yearning for self-discovery.”
21: “When I was 21 years old and came back to America, I was more in love with the study of chess than ever. The game had become endlessly fascinating to me, and its implications stretched far beyond winning and losing—I was no longer primarily refining the skill of playing chess, but was discovering myself through chess. I saw the art as a movement closer and closer to an unattainable truth, as if I were traveling through a tunnel that continuously deepened and widened as I progressed. The more I knew about the game, the more I realized how much there was to know. I emerged from each good work session in slightly deeper awe of the mystery of chess, and with a building sense of humility. Increasingly, I felt more tender about my work than fierce. Art was truly becoming for art’s sake.”

Passion & Personality

“The greatest performers convert their passions into fuel with tremendous consistency.”

Passion & Love:

“Chess was a constant challenge. My whole career, my father and I searched out opponents who were a little stronger than me, so even as I dominated the scholastic circuit, losing was part of my regular experience. I believe this was important for maintaining a healthy perspective on the game. While there was a lot of pressure on my shoulders, fear of failure didn’t move me so much as an intense passion for the game.”

“Bruce did not want to feed me information, but to help my mind carve itself into maturity. Over time, in his coaxing, humorous, and understatedly firm manner, Bruce gave me a foundation of critical chess principles and a systematic understanding of analysis and calculation. While the new knowledge was valuable, the most important factor in these first months of study was that Bruce nurtured my love for chess, and he never let technical material smother my innate feeling for the game.”
“He had to teach me to be more disciplined without dampening my love for chess or suppressing my natural voice. Many teachers have no feel for this balance and try to force their students into cookie-cutter molds.”
“Despite significant outside pressure, my parents and Bruce decided to keep me out of tournaments until I had been playing chess for a year or so, because they wanted my relationship to the game to be about learning and passion first, and competition a distant second.”
“I dove deeper and deeper into chess. Of course there were plateaus, periods when my results leveled off while I internalized the information necessary for my next growth spurt, but I didn’t mind. I had a burning love for chess and so I pushed through the rocky periods with a can-do attitude.”

Personality & Unique Disposition:

“I believe that at the highest levels, performers and artists must be true to themselves. There can be no denial, no repression of true personality, or else the creation will be false—the performer will be alienated from his or her intuitive voice.”

“A key ingredient to my success in those years was that my style on the chessboard was a direct expression of my personality.”
“I believe that one of the most critical factors in the transition to becoming a conscious high performer is the degree to which your relationship to your pursuit stays in harmony with your unique disposition. There will inevitably be times when we need to try new ideas, release our current knowledge to take in new information—but it is critical to integrate this new information in a manner that does not violate who we are. By taking away our natural voice, we leave ourselves without a center of gravity to balance us as we navigate the countless obstacles along our way.”

Intelligence & Intuition

“My vision of the road to mastery—you start with the fundamentals, get a solid foundation fueled by understanding the principles of your discipline, then you expand and refine your repertoire, guided by your individual predispositions, while keeping in touch, however abstractly, with what you feel to be the essential core of the art. What results is a network of deeply internalized, interconnected knowledge that expands from a central, personal locus point. The question of intuition relates to how that network is navigated and used as fuel for creative insight.”

Intelligence Theories:

“Dr. Carol Dweck, a leading researcher in the field of developmental psychology, makes the distinction between entity and incremental theories of intelligence.”

Entity theorists:

“prone to use language like ‘I am smart at this'”
“attribute their success or failure to an ingrained and unalterable level of ability”
“see their overall intelligence or skill level at a certain discipline to be a fixed entity, a thing that cannot evolve”
“see themselves as just plain ‘smart’ or ‘dumb,’ or ‘good’ or ‘bad’ at something (a ‘learned helplessness orientation’)”
“tend to have been told that they did well when they have succeeded, and that they weren’t any good at something when they have failed”
“more brittle and prone to quit”

Incremental theorists / learning theorists:

“more prone to describe their results with sentences like ‘I got it because I worked very hard at it’ or ‘I should have tried harder'”
“tends to sense that with hard work, difficult material can be grasped—step by step, incrementally, the novice can become the master”
“when challenged by difficult material, are far more likely to rise to the level of the game”
“associate success with hard work and tend to have a ‘mastery-oriented response’ to challenging situations”
“are given feedback that is more process-oriented”

Intuition:

“In my opinion, intuition is our most valuable compass in this world. It is the bridge between the unconscious and the conscious mind, and it is hugely important to keep in touch with what makes it tick.”

“The clearest way to approach this discussion is with the imagery of chunking and carved neural pathways. Chunking relates to the mind’s ability to assimilate large amounts of information into a cluster that is bound together by certain patterns or principles particular to a given discipline.
In a nutshell, chunking relates to the mind’s ability to take lots of information, find a harmonizing/logically consistent strain, and put it together into one mental file that can be accessed as if it were a single piece of information.”
“By ‘carved neural pathways’ I am referring to the process of creating chunks and the navigation system between chunks. I am not making a literal physical description, so much as illustrating the way the brain operates.”

Mastery & Recovery

“If ambition spells probable disappointment, why pursue excellence? In my opinion, the answer to both questions lies in a well-thought-out approach that inspires resilience, the ability to make connections between diverse pursuits, and day-to-day enjoyment of the process.”

Excellence & Mastery:

“The key to pursuing excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity. Usually, growth comes at the expense of previous comfort or safety.”

“In my experience, successful people shoot for the stars, put their hearts on the line in every battle, and ultimately discover that the lessons learned from the pursuit of excellence mean much more than the immediate trophies and glory. In the long run, painful losses may prove much more valuable than wins—those who are armed with a healthy attitude and are able to draw wisdom from every experience, ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ are the ones who make it down the road. They are also the ones who are happier along the way. Of course the real challenge is to stay in range of this long-term perspective when you are under fire and hurting in the middle of the war. This, maybe our biggest hurdle, is at the core of the art of learning.”
“In my experience the greatest of artists and competitors are masters of navigating their own psychologies, playing on their strengths, controlling the tone of battle so that it fits with their personalities.”
“Mastery involves discovering the most resonant information and integrating it so deeply and fully it disappears and allows us to fly free.”

Relaxation, Recovery, & Renewal:

“If you are interested in really improving as a performer, I would suggest incorporating the rhythm of stress and recovery into all aspects of your life. Truth be told, this is what my entire approach to learning is based on—breaking down the artificial barriers between our diverse life experiences so all moments become enriched by a sense of interconnectedness.”

“Little breaks from the competitive intensity of my life have been and still are an integral part of my success. Times at sea are periods of renewal, coming together with family, being with nature, putting things back in perspective. I am able to let my conscious mind move away from my training, and to gain creative new angles on the next steps of my growth … I would come back with new ideas and a full tank of energy and determination.”
“The better we are at recovering, the greater potential we have to endure and perform under stress.”
“There is a clear physiological connection when it comes to recovery—cardiovascular interval training can have a profound effect on your ability to quickly release tension and recover from mental exhaustion. What is more, physical flushing and mental clarity are very much intertwined.”
“In your performance training, the first step to mastering the zone is to practice the ebb and flow of stress and recovery.”
“In all disciplines, there are times when a performer is ready for action, and times when he or she is soft, in flux, broken-down or in a period of growth. Learners in this phase are inevitably vulnerable. It is important to have perspective on this and allow yourself protected periods for cultivation.”
“It is essential to have a liberating incremental approach that allows for times when you are not in a peak performance state. We must take responsibility for ourselves, and not expect the rest of the world to understand what it takes to become the best that we can become. Great ones are willing to get burned time and again as they sharpen their swords in the fire.”
“As we get better and better at releasing tension and coming back with a full tank of gas in our everyday activities, both physical and mental, we will gain confidence in our abilities to move back and forth between concentration, adrenaline flow, physical exertion (any kind of stress), and relaxation. I can’t tell you how liberating it is to know that relaxation is just a blink away from full awareness. Besides adding to your psychological and physical resilience, this opens up some wonderful and surprising new possibilities. For one thing, now that your conscious mind is free to take little breaks, you’ll be delighted by the surges of creativity that will emerge out of your unconscious. You’ll become more attuned to your intuition and will slowly become more and more true to yourself stylistically. The unconscious mind is a powerful tool, and learning how to relax under pressure is a key first step to tapping into its potential.”

Process vs Goals & Depth vs Breadth

“As adults, we have to take responsibility for ourselves and nurture a healthy, liberated mind-set. We need to put ourselves out there, give it our all, and reap the lesson, win or lose. The fact of the matter is that there will be nothing learned from any challenge in which we don’t try our hardest. Growth comes at the point of resistance. We learn by pushing ourselves and finding what really lies at the outer reaches of our abilities.”

Process vs Goals:

“I have seen many people in diverse fields take some version of the process-first philosophy and transform it into an excuse for never putting themselves on the line or pretending not to care about results. They claim to be egoless, to care only about learning, but really this is an excuse to avoid confronting themselves. This issue of process vs. goal is very delicate, and I want to carefully define how I feel the question should be navigated.”

“While a fixation on results is certainly unhealthy, short-term goals can be useful developmental tools if they are balanced within a nurturing long-term philosophy. Too much sheltering from results can be stunting. The road to success is not easy or else everyone would be the greatest at what they do—we need to be psychologically prepared to face the unavoidable challenges along our way, and when it comes down to it, the only way to learn how to swim is by getting in the water.”
“When we have worked hard and succeed at something, we should be allowed to smell the roses. The key, in my opinion, is to recognize that the beauty of those roses lies in their transience. It is drifting away even as we inhale. We enjoy the win fully while taking a deep breath, then we exhale, note the lesson learned, and move on to the next adventure.”

Depth vs Breadth:

“Once we reach a certain level of expertise at a given discipline and our knowledge is expansive, the critical issue becomes: how is all this stuff navigated and put to use? I believe the answers to this question are the gateway to the most esoteric levels of elite performance.”

“The theme is depth over breadth. The learning principle is to plunge into the detailed mystery of the micro in order to understand what makes the macro tick.”
“Depth beats breadth any day of the week, because it opens a channel for the intangible, unconscious, creative components of our hidden potential.”
“This concept of ‘making smaller circles’ has been a critical component of my learning process in chess and the martial arts. In both fields, players tend to get attached to fancy techniques and fail to recognize that subtle internalization and refinement is much more important than the quantity of what is learned.”

Adversity & Resilience

“Mental resilience is arguably the most critical trait of a world-class performer, and it should be nurtured continuously. Left to my own devices, I am always looking for ways to become more and more psychologically impregnable. When uncomfortable, my instinct is not to avoid the discomfort but to become at peace with it … My instinct is always to seek out challenges as opposed to avoiding them.”

Adversity, Internal Conflict, & Psychological Warfare:

“I was unhindered by internal conflict—a state of being that I have come to see as fundamental to the learning process.”

“For me, competitive chess was not about perfection. It was more of a mental prizefight, with two opponents trading advantages, momentum going one way and then the other.”
“I thrived under adversity. My style was to make the game complex and then work my way through the chaos. When the position was wild, I had huge confidence … While my opponents wanted to win in the openings, right off the bat, I guided positions into complicated middlegames and abstract endings. So as the game went on, their confidence shrank and I became a predator.”
“One of the most critical strengths of a superior competitor in any discipline—whether we are speaking about sports, business negotiations, or even presidential debates—is the ability to dictate the tone of the battle.”
“Psychological warfare is at the center of nearly all high-level competitive disciplines—and I mean competitive in the loosest sense imaginable.”
“Awareness of these dynamics can make you hard to manipulate, and can allow you to turn the tables on even the savviest of conditioners.”
“When working with highly skilled and mentally tough opponents, the psychological game gets increasingly subtle. The battle becomes about reading breath patterns and blinks of the eye, playing in frames the opponent is unaware of, invisible technical manipulation that slowly creates response patterns. If I understand a series of movements more deeply, in more frames, with more detail, then I can manipulate my opponent’s intention without him realizing what happened.”
“Whether speaking of a corporate negotiation, a legal battle, or even war itself, if the opponent is temporarily tied down qualitatively or energetically more than you are expending to tie it down, you have a large advantage. The key is to master the technical skills appropriate for applying this idea to your area of focus.”
“Once I recognized that deeply buried secrets in a competitor tend to surface under intense pressure, my study of chess became a form of psychoanalysis. I unearthed my subtlest foibles through chess, and the link between my personal and artistic sides was undeniable. The psychological theme could range from transitions to resilient concentration, fluidity of mind, control, leaps into the unknown, sitting with tension, the downward spiral, being at peace with discomfort, giving into fatigue, emotional turbulence, and invariably the chess moves paralleled the life moment. Whenever I noticed a weakness, I took it on. I also studied my opponents closely. Like myself, their psychological nuances in life manifested over the board.”

Resilience & Resolve:

“In performance training, first we learn to flow with whatever comes. Then we learn to use whatever comes to our advantage. Finally, we learn to be completely self-sufficient and create our own earthquakes, so our mental process feeds itself explosive inspirations without the need for outside stimulus.”

There are three critical steps in a resilient performer’s evolving relationship to chaotic situations:

Cultivate the Soft Zone: “We have to learn to be at peace with imperfection … We cultivate The Soft Zone, we sit with our emotions, observe them, work with them, learn how to let them float away if they are rocking our boat, and how to use them when they are fueling our creativity … This Soft Zone is resilient, like a flexible blade of grass that can move with and survive hurricane-force winds. Another way of envisioning the importance of the Soft Zone is through an ancient Indian parable that has been quite instructive in my life for many years: A man wants to walk across the land, but the earth is covered with thorns. He has two options—one is to pave his road, to tame all of nature into compliance. The other is to make sandals. Making sandals is the internal solution. Like the Soft Zone, it does not base success on a submissive world or overpowering force, but on intelligent preparation and cultivated resilience.”
Weaknesses into strengths: “Then we turn our weaknesses into strengths until there is no denial of our natural eruptions and nerves sharpen our game, fear alerts us, anger funnels into focus … Learn to use imperfection to our advantage … Learn to use distraction, inspiring ourselves with what initially would have thrown us off our games.”
Emotional state triggers: “Next we discover what emotional states trigger our greatest performances … Learn to create ripples in our consciousness, little jolts to spur us along, so we are constantly inspired whether or not external conditions are inspiring … Learn to re-create the inspiring settings internally … A deep mastery of performance psychology involves the internal creation of inspiring conditions”

More on resilience:

“A key component of high-level learning is cultivating a resilient awareness that is the older, conscious embodiment of a child’s playful obliviousness.”
“Instead of running from our emotions or being swept away by their initial gusts, we should learn to sit with them, become at peace with their unique flavors, and ultimately discover deep pools of inspiration. I have found that this is a natural process. Once we build our tolerance for turbulence and are no longer upended by the swells of our emotional life, we can ride them and even pick up speed with their slopes.”
“Once we learn how to use adversity to our advantage, we can manufacture the helpful growth opportunity without actual danger or injury. I call this tool the internal solution—we can notice external events that trigger helpful growth or performance opportunities, and then internalize the effects of those events without their actually happening. In this way, adversity becomes a tremendous source of creative inspiration.”
“When aiming for the top, your path requires an engaged, searching mind. You have to make obstacles spur you to creative new angles in the learning process. Let setbacks deepen your resolve.”
“One idea I taught was the importance of regaining presence and clarity of mind after making a serious error. This is a hard lesson for all competitors and performers. The first mistake rarely proves disastrous, but the downward spiral of the second, third, and fourth error creates a devastating chain reaction.”
“The ideal for any performer is flexibility. If you have optimal conditions, then it is always great to take your time and go through an extended routine. If things are less organized, then be prepared with a flexible state of mind and a condensed routine.”

Balance & Flow

“If deep, fluid presence becomes second nature, then life, art, and learning take on a richness that will continually surprise and delight. Those who excel are those who maximize each moment’s creative potential—for these masters of living, presence to the day-to-day learning process is akin to that purity of focus others dream of achieving in rare climactic moments when everything is on the line. The secret is that everything is always on the line. The more present we are at practice, the more present we will be in competition, in the boardroom, at the exam, the operating table, the big stage. If we have any hope of attaining excellence, let alone of showing what we’ve got under pressure, we have to be prepared by a lifestyle of reinforcement. Presence must be like breathing.”

Opposites & Balance:

“In most everyday life experiences, there seems to be a tangible connection between opposites … The human mind defines things in relation to one another—without light the notion of darkness would be unintelligible.”

“Just as the yin-yang symbol possesses a kernel of light in the dark, and of dark in the light, creative leaps are grounded in a technical foundation.”
“I have found that if we feed the unconscious, it will discover connections between what may appear to be disparate realities. The path to artistic insight in one direction often involves deep study of another—the intuition makes uncanny connections that lead to a crystallization of fragmented notions.”
“To my mind, the fields of learning and performance are an exploration of greyness—of the in-between. There is the careful balance of pushing yourself relentlessly, but not so hard that you melt down. Muscles and minds need to stretch to grow, but if stretched too thin, they will snap. A competitor needs to be process-oriented, always looking for stronger opponents to spur growth, but it is also important to keep on winning enough to maintain confidence. We have to release our current ideas to soak in new material, but not so much that we lose touch with our unique natural talents. Vibrant, creative idealism needs to be tempered by a practical, technical awareness.”
“Confidence is critical for a great competitor, but overconfidence is brittle.”

Presence & Flow:

“In every discipline, the ability to be clearheaded, present, cool under fire is much of what separates the best from the mediocre. In competition, the dynamic is often painfully transparent. If one player is serenely present while the other is being ripped apart by internal issues, the outcome is already clear.”

“I believe an appreciation for simplicity, the everyday—the ability to dive deeply into the banal and discover life’s hidden richness—is where success, let alone happiness, emerges.”
“It is a strange feeling. First you are a person looking at a chessboard. You calculate through the various alternatives, the mind gaining speed as it pores through the complexities, until consciousness of one’s separation from the position ebbs away and what remains is the sensation of being inside the energetic chess flow. Then the mind moves with the speed of an electrical current, complex problems are breezed through with an intuitive clarity, you get deeper and deeper into the soul of the chess position, time falls away, the concept of ‘I’ is gone, all that exists is blissful engagement, pure presence, absolute flow … There was a surreal synergy of me and no me, pure thought and the awareness of a thinker.”
“I developed a method of study that made chess and life begin to merge in my being.”
“In both my chess and martial arts lives, there is a method of study that has been critical to my growth. I sometimes refer to it as the study of numbers to leave numbers, or form to leave form. A basic example of this process, which applies to any discipline, can easily be illustrated through chess: A chess student must initially become immersed in the fundamentals in order to have any potential to reach a high level of skill. He or she will learn the principles of endgame, middlegame, and opening play. Initially one or two critical themes will be considered at once, but over time the intuition learns to integrate more and more principles into a sense of flow. Eventually the foundation is so deeply internalized that it is no longer consciously considered, but is lived. This process continuously cycles along as deeper layers of the art are soaked in.”
“When I looked at the critical position from my tournament game, what had stumped me a few days or hours or weeks before now seemed perfectly apparent. I saw the best move, felt the correct plan, understood the evaluation of the position. I couldn’t explain this new knowledge with variations or words. It felt more elemental, like rippling water or a light breeze. My chess intuition had deepened. This was the study of numbers to leave numbers.”
“It is important to understand that by numbers to leave numbers, or form to leave form, I am describing a process in which technical information is integrated into what feels like natural intelligence. Sometimes there will literally be numbers. Other times there will be principles, patterns, variations, techniques, ideas.”

The Tao & Tai Chi

“It was in my European wanderings that I found the Tao Te Ching—an ancient Chinese text of naturalist musings, believed to be written by the hermetic sage Laotse (also known as Lao Tsu) in the 6th century B.C.E.”

Taoist Philosophy:

“During these years my relationship to chess became increasingly introspective and decreasingly competitive. A large factor in this movement was my deepening connection to Taoist philosophy.”

“Studying the Tao Te Ching, I felt like I was unearthing everything I sensed but could not yet put into words. I yearned to ‘blunt my sharpness,’ to temper my ambitions and make a movement away from the material. Laotse’s focus was inward, on the underlying essence as opposed to the external manifestations.”
“The Tao Te Ching’s wisdom centers on releasing obstructions to our natural insight, seeing false constructs for what they are and leaving them behind. This made sense to me aesthetically, as I was already involved with my study of numbers to leave numbers. My understanding of learning was about searching for the flow that lay at the heart of, and transcended, the technical. The resonance of these ideas was exciting for me, and turned out to be hugely important later in my life.”

Tai Chi:

“I think what initially struck me that fall evening, when I watched my first Tai Chi class, was that the goal was not winning, but, simply, being.”

“My previous attempts at meditation had been tumultuous—a ball of nerves chilling itself out. Now it was as if my insides were being massaged while my mind floated happily through space. As I consciously released the tension from one part of my body at a time, I experienced a surprising sense of physical awareness. A subtle buzzing tickled my fingers. I played with that feeling, and realized that when deeply relaxed, I could focus on any part of my body and become aware of a rich well of sensation that had previously gone unnoticed.”
“A huge element of Tai Chi is releasing obstructions so the body and mind can flow smoothly together. If there is tension in one place, the mind stops there, and the fluidity is broken.”
“In William Chen’s Tai Chi form, expansive (outward or upward) movements occur with an in-breath, so the body and mind wake up, energize into a shape. He gives the example of reaching out to shake the hand of someone you are fond of, waking up after a restful sleep, or agreeing with somebody’s idea. Usually, such positive moments are associated with an in-breath—in the Tai Chi form, we ‘breathe into the fingertips.’ Then, with the out-breath, the body releases, de-energizes, like the last exhalation before falling asleep.”
“The essence of Tai Chi Chuan as a martial art is not to clash with the opponent but to blend with his energy, yield to it, and overcome with softness. This was enigmatic and interesting, and maybe I’d be able to apply it to the rest of my life.”
“One of the most challenging leaps for Push Hands students is to release the ego enough to allow themselves to be tossed around while they learn how not to resist.”
“Investment in loss is giving yourself to the learning process. In Push Hands it is letting yourself be pushed without reverting back to old habits—training yourself to be soft and receptive when your body doesn’t have any idea how to do it and wants to tighten up.”