Wouldn't it be great to stop muscling our way through life? To recognize our weariness, and in it to find surprising power??
Today I was thinking about our muscles, our skeletal system and our fascia. I remembered how the fascia, when met with a ballistic force, turns from a sticky connected liquid to a solid. Yet it remains elastic and resilient, storing and providing a tremendous amount of energy and power, like a super rubber band.
Additionally our fascia provides protection, structure and strength to our movements. Recent scientific research has discovered that our fascia provides much more “strength” than our muscles could ever generate.
Muscles vs. Fascia is a prime example of external versus internal.
I thought of how many people focus on building muscle. In fact, a highly developed, sinewy defined muscular body often represents strength and power. Many spend hours at the gym, just to build a body of constructed of well defined and substantial muscle bulk. This focus is all external.
But the truth is, the more we let go of our muscles and trust in our own deeper structural system, the skeleton, the fascia, the tendons and ligaments; the more power we actually develop. These structures are all internal; that which is not seen. This is a truth learned in Tai Chi.
When the mind and body work together as one entity, rather than just the muscles, we create more force and power than our external muscles can possible generate. In truth, the muscles are the least of the power potential in our body structure.
When we move through Tai Chi, we have a choice: either we take control or we let go.
We can move our limbs, using our muscles to initiate and complete the movement. This usually leads to tension and inefficient movement. Or we can let go, let go, let go. Softening our muscles and letting go so our bones and fascia provide the structure and power. Then we need only to follow the Qi. We can initiate the movement, but then we must let go and follow the movement.
This is external vs. internal.
Our will vs. God’s will.
This made me think…why do we have muscles at all? What real purpose do they serve if not for strength of movement. Maybe we have muscles to initiate the movement, but not to control and create strength behind the movement.
So I began to wonder if Adam and Eve were structured differently than us. Perhaps when we were One with God, we did not need muscles. And once we took from the tree of knowledge and exerted our own will, we grew muscles. Muscles from the hard labor of having to harvest our own food and work the land.
Muscles override the natural movement system by exerting strength and power of our own…. our own will. And now, we are spending a lifetime trying to get past our own will in order to let go and access God’s will.
The fascia, the skeletal system (our bones, ligaments and tendons) are enough. To me, they represent the internal aspects of movement. It is where the real power lies. These internal powerful structures represent God’s will, God’s energy, God’s power and even God's presence; the internal.
Our muscles on the other hand, represent our own will, our own strength and effort, which usually leads to more problems (ever strained your back or pulled a muscle? That would never happen if we relied on our God given internal movement system.)
The more we try to control, the further away from feeling Qi (God) we are.
Perhaps Adam and Eve had no muscles. They moved with God, internally and with the greatest of ease, living in perfect health and vitality of Qi. But when we decided to exert our own will, we suddenly had an external frame of reference, we moved through our own effort and grew muscles.
When we “grow weary,” when we have “no might”…when we have finally fatigued out our own will, our own muscles…..our own choices….then perhaps we have nothing left but to go internal. And there, in that place is where God gives us true might.
Scripture:
He gives strength to the weary, And to him who has no might He increases power.
Isaiah 40:29 AMP
Maybe this verse is an instruction for us. A hidden message to let go and quit trying to have so much might! To turn within, to the internal power we all possess with God. That it is okay to be weary and in our weariness, we can find great strength beyond our own will, beyond our own "muscles."
Wouldn't it be great to stop muscling our way through life? To recognize our weariness, and in it to find surprising power??
All we need to do it let go - When we do, we access God’s might which is far greater than our own.
And when we do Tai Chi (or Qigong), if we merely let go and follow the momentum, letting go of our muscle involvement, allowing our internal structures to do the work, we will discover much more power and more Qi.
Prayer
Help me to approach things a different way
Instead of exerting my own will
to change matter with matter,
allow me to see and understand
in letting go there is might,
So that In the place of weariness
I can find the greatest strength.
Amen