Choosing

How do we balance standing still with the will to change? This is the paradox at the root of Zhan Zhuang.

Probably the greatest stumbling block in Zhan Zhuang is the belief that being still can't bring about change, betterment. It's counterintuitive.

In fact I associate the most profound changes in my life, my character, my ability with this practice.

The next stumbling block is my expectation that somehow it's going to get easier.  In some ways it does. In other ways every level simply bring on new challenges.

How I'm getting through things these days is with the act of choosing. To get through the middle of life, of projects, of challenges, thing need to be re-chosen. We need sometimes to choose the path we've been on again, just to re-assure ourselves that this is indeed a choice, not something that's been inflicted on us.

An Intense Feeling of Relaxation and Comfort

The thing, of course, that has made me come back to this practice again and again and again, is my memory of the profound feeling of relaxation and comfort I have felt whenever I've maintained the practice over an extended period.

I'm still not sure why I can't seem to maintain a permanent commitment to the practice.

Maybe because I still haven't made a primary choice yet.

Primary choices, according to one of my favourite self-help books, The Path of Least Resistance, are choices that are complete once you've attained them.  A book, a runner's body, a clean house.  These are all things that I can say "done" about.  I'll know them when I achieve them.

I spent some time this morning trying to figure out what the primary choice in Zhang Zhuan was, and it was this.  This feeling of comfort and relation that happens when I've maintained my commitment for an extended time.

And not even for an extended time anymore, because I've felt this feeling so many times before that I can re-call at will.

If I choose that.

If I let life choose me.  Too often, I'm drawn off the path into anxious obsessing, worrying, debating.