Barefoot Doctors

We were recently listening to Alex Honnold’s Ted Talk. Not surprisingly he was talking about his well publicised free solo (solo and without ropes) climb of El Capitan. Whenever he has talked about his achievement he focuses heavily on the experience feeling how he envisaged it would. The implication is that completing it safely was not enough, the main purpose was for it to be the desired experience. During the Ted Talk he said that it ‘felt like mastery’.

This was lovely to hear, because it clearly was one of the great demonstrations of mastery in human history. It was also nice as Tai Chi practitioners to hear because it is somewhat taboo in Tai Chi or martial arts to self-declare mastery. This makes some sense if you are fighting regularly, because it would be easy to look foolish if such a declaration was followed by a loss. But surely a sufficiently impressive fight record should allow for a fighter defining themselves in this way. It’s perhaps even more taboo in the Tai Chi world, partly because traditional martial arts have a difficult relationship with combat sports and also because it’s unlikely any two Tai Chi practitioners would agree quite what Tai Chi is. It is this lack of definition which makes it hard to measure achievement. But this is easily resolved, just define what you are trying to achieve and put together some kind of protocol to measure it and boom, you have the framework to master something.

An example of the above might be useful. Let’s take an attribute like balance. A lot of people come to Tai Chi unable to stand on one leg for ten seconds let alone a minute or more. Then if you want to take this exercise to the next level and really go deep in to your proprioception you can repeat it with your eyes closed. Apply this to a footwork routine on some kind of apparatus like plum blossom poles for example, or a natural feature like stepping stones across a river and there you have it, demonstrable mastery at a modest level.

Back to the Ted Talk and the self-declaration of mastery. This got us thinking. There is physical mastery as referenced above, energetic mastery and meditative mastery. No doubt at some point we will come back to these, but what actually sprung to mind was the health improvements that come with Tai Chi practice, somewhat connected to the idea of vital energy. In the past we have been cynical about the claimed health benefits of Tai Chi which can be kryptonite for bad joints, and arguably for many people you would be better off with a brisk walk. But the fact is that we have found both in ourselves and our students that Tai Chi has more than anything, been a trigger to take charge of our own health both utilising the practice itself as well as auxiliary practices from other traditions such as cold water immersion for example, and other aspects of healthy living such as nutritional supplementation. Despite this we have never made any claims about health benefits, partly because the research is patchy, partly because we don’t want to in any way risk making false claims, and partly because we’re so woo woo and left field that good health, or should we say better health (because we all start from different places) is not the main reason we do what we do.

In China there has historically been the tradition of the barefoot doctor. These individuals had limited training but allowed for medical knowledge to be dispersed more efficiently over a wide area which is of course necessary in a large country. It generally involved a combination of traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine. These individuals were often itinerant which had the positive of being able to reach remote people, and the negative of possibly not being around to face the consequences of ineffective or dangerous treatments. Doing a quick straw poll amongst our instructors and students we have found that in fact people have recently had the best medical advice from their peers and not from medical professionals, so the barefoot tradition is alive and well. And this extends beyond medicine, with trust for authority seemingly at a low this idea extends to all sorts from legal advice to home schooling children and much more besides.

So maybe now is the time for us to change and blow our own trumpets somewhat. We have just been subject to the most absurd few years of quackery from the medical establishment. In fact quackery sounds too comical, these were extremely dark events with tragic consequences. Health care has become incredibly inefficient and ineffective here in the UK and many of us feel tragically let down and quite frankly a bit scared that a safety net has been removed from our lives and that of those important to us. So whilst we still feel for the reasons above not in a position to make any claims about our practice, we sure are attempting to master our own health and our practice is a huge part of that. We would encourage everybody through their own unique path to do the same.

Until next time, be well.