Why do T'ai Chi?

I've read that stress isn't caused by events in your life; it's caused by your response to those events. It's your thoughts themselves--remembering past failures, resisting life as it now is, or fearing the future--that causes stress. Because your body, your biochemistry, your fight-or-flight response does its thing as if those events are really happening. So, dummy, stop thinking stressful thoughts! How easy is that? Ha!

About a year and 8 1/2 months ago (but who's counting?), my husband and I left our high-paying jobs to start our own software company. We get to be our own bosses (amazing!) and we have a safety net: if we don't succeed within 3 years, we can get our job back. What a sweet deal! You'd think it would be the formula for stress-free living. But no! What was in my head? "What if our product isn't done in 3 years? We'll lose our safety net!" "What if we run out of savings before we launch our product?" I was freaking myself out, and I knew it. I needed to find a way to quiet my mind.

I made 20 minutes of meditation a morning ritual. I've meditated off and on for years, with mixed success. Often during the meditation, my mind would quiet, and I'd achieve a sense of calm. But as soon as I saw dishes in the sink or a bill I needed to pay (demands on time or money), my calm would evaporate. Eventually, I decided the meditation was ineffective, and therefore a waste of 20 minutes a day.

I tried going to the gym and doing aerobic exercise in hopes of "blowing off steam." This did work to some extent. I tended to feel more relaxed afterward. But it wiped me out. I didn't have the energy to get back to work and focus. So, 3 times a week became 2, then 1, then nothing.

I had done yoga for a number of years. But I knew from experience: in standing poses, I'd fall over if my mind was racing, so it wouldn't race. But as soon as I lay down for Savasana (corpse pose), my mind would start churning again.

I had the idea that I should maybe try Qigong. I looked for a book at the library, and found The Complete Idiot's Guide to T'ai Chi and Qigong. And what an incredible find! With every inhalation, you breathe in chi, health, vitality; with every exhalation, you breathe out worries, stress, anxiety. One of the exercises to to physically fling your arms and upper body as you exhale, while mentally flinging off your negative stuff. You play T'ai Chi--you come back to it day after day because it feels good, and is fun. The way the author described it, it was like yoga, but moving, so that you seamlessly move right back into your life when the practice is over, even take some of the practices with you. As long as you breathe (in with chi; let go the stress), you can get distance on stressful things in your life, and start to look at them as a form of entertainment, just see how the drama unfolds.

Since I started practicing T'ai Chi and Qigong, I really have let go of a lot of the time and money stress. Every day, I just fling it off. When we encounter some nasty problem in our software that takes a long time to fix, or chores take longer than we think they're going to, or we have to pay for car repairs, or whatever, more and more often, I take a deep breath, and let it go. Sometimes I even laugh. It's entertainment.