Writing Taichi Pace

The Pace of Life [THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN PREDICTION MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 1998]

IS ETERNAL YOUTH JUST A PIPE DREAM? OR CAN WE SLOW THE AGEING PROCESS? If you are seeking the elixir of youth and have tried diets, exercises and vitamins which promised more than they delivered, maybe you will find the secret of eternal youth within your mind. The key to slowing the ageing process could be how we perceive time. Time is not a universal mechanical consistency but is unique for each of us. We can speed it up or slow it down by the way we think and behave. Hard to believe? Tai Chi Chuan is a martial art and exercise which allows the practitioner to glimpse the flexibility and personal nature of time. The secret is slowness. Unlike most martial arts where the beginner starts the movements slowly and builds up speed, Tai Chi Chuan works in the opposite way; the ultimate aim is to perform the solo form very slowly. It is during the solo form that the Tai Chi Chuan practitioner often experiences a curious sensation of time. When I began practising Tai Chi Chuan I took about fifteen minutes to complete the solo form and it seemed that the time went on forever. But now t wenty years later the form takes me around half an hour and when I glance at the clock immediately afterwards I am amazed how quickly the time has elapsed. Where does the thirty minutes go? And why is it that the slower I move the faster time seems to fly? Would someone not practising Tai Chi Chuan perceive the same 30 minute period going just as fast as I had? Or, as Einstein theorised, does time pass at a different rate for each of us according to our state of mind? It if does then that could be the reason why two people the same age can look older or younger than one another by up to twenty years. Could it be that people for whom time habitually passes quickly age more slowly than those for whom time seems to drag? I have experienced time `speed-ups' quite often. I remember one evening when I was a teenager being engrossed playing the piano and composing. I got up to prepare my bedtime drink (expecting it to be around ten thirty) and suddenly felt stiff. When I glanced at the clock I had the shock of my life when I saw it was two in the morning! It was as though I had been transported foreword in time three hours had just vanished! Another curious thing was that I was so engrossed in my composing that I didn't notice the stiffness and pain accumulating in my joints from sitting too long in place till

I came back into sync with `normal' time. A few years later while working as a cook in a restaurant there I had a rush of customers at about 10.30 pm. All I remember was a frantic blur of activity for what I thought was half an hour or so. But when the rush finished and I looked at my watch it showed ten to one in the morning! Curiously, most people remark that I look around ten or fifteen years younger than my age. Is it a coincidence that I have frequently experienced time speeding up? A friend of mine who is 27 is often mistaken for man of forty; he weighs 14 stone, is balding and often complains that time “drags”. Yet I am the one who is 40 years old; I also have to hunt for grey hairs, still weigh 8 stone and some people even mistake me for a student! (more of a social embarrassment than bravado). So what is happening with my friend myself? Is the secret of ageing merely set in our genes before we are born or can we effect the ageing process by how we behave and think? To discover why people age at different rates we could explore a simple analogy of two men locked in a room together for an hour. As they settle down, man A is engrossed in a fascinating book on his favourite subject. Man B, however, has been forced into the experiment; he is bored and is starring at the clock wondering what he has done to deserve this tedious fate. When they come out of the room, man A, who has been engrossed in his book, will think the hour has flown whereas man B, who was unoccupied and bored, might consider that he had been in the room for a whole day! What would these perceptions do for the physiology of the two men over a longer period? If man B regularly gets bored and feels time dragging repeatedly over a ten year period then he will truly feel that twenty five years have elapsed and he will age accordingly. If man A has spent the ten years absorbed with a creative hobby he will feel that the time has passed exceptionally quickly (more like three years) and he will look younger than m an B. Why? It is likely that the subconscious mind which controls all the body's functions reacts to the accumulated mental input and makes adjustments in the cells of the body accordingly. People who get bored frequently will feel time drag and therefore age quickly. However, the person continually absorbed in a fascinating activity will feel time flying and stay younger looking because their subconscious mind will age cells comparatively slowly. The good news is that people involved in activities demanding intuitive and creative skills (such as subjects covered in Prediction magazine) are more likely to age at a slow rate than those who wander through life with little to occupy their minds - or occupied with purely logical pursuits. Creative artists, composers and actors seem to go on working into their eighties and looking at least a decade younger. Martial artists in particular tend to age slowly; I have met masters in China and Japan who look in their forties but are actually octogenarians. They have practised the art of going `outside time' - a state where their will appears to stop time itself - daily over a periods of years. So

for those of us who practise martial arts, or perform on stage or composing, or being engrossed in setting up a birth chart, time just disappears! And logically if time is flying then the person experiencing this must slow down. But can we develop a practical system to deliberately slow down our ageing process? Yes. Find an absorbing activity; a creative art is best (activities like trainspotting or computer programming may be absorbing but are too logical). By moving slowly and being totally engrossed in the activity we speed up the universe around us and slow our metabolism down. It has long been thought that the pace of life in cities is too fast and leads to stress and premature ageing. Could the reason be that the people who live and work there experience so much within a single day that their subconscious minds react on their body’s cells as though a week or month has elapsed? In this age of stress where people are working themselves into an early grave perhaps it is not worry or stress which causes premature ageing but rapid activity (mental and physical). Evidence of how consciousness effects the ageing process perhaps comes from the way the youngest and eldest members of society behave and think. Elderly people have slow metabolisms and a slow pace of life. Yet most of them complain about time flying past. A seventy year old looks quite similar to an eighty year old because elderly people age slowly. Children, however, have fast metabolism and rush around impatiently. Consequently they are always complaining that time is dragging and nothing happens quickly enough for them. Yet they grow (age) at a tremendous rate. Is this merely physiology or does consciousness itself effect our rate of ageing? Perhaps those of us who want to slow the ageing process should regularly practice a favourite creative activity very slowly. In fact we need not even move physically at all. After missing a train one Sunday morning I had to wait an hour for the next one so I sat down, closed my eyes and visualised myself performing the Tai Chi Chuan form. When I opened my eyes after what I regarded as a few `moments' I noticed that over ten minutes had elapsed on the station clock. Whatever activity you chose to absorb yourself in and practice slowly - or visualise yourself practising, you will perceive time going quickly. And the slower you go the quicker time will pass. If you continue to slowing yourself down and speed up the world over a period of time you should age more slowly than people who rush around like children. So the next time you are feeling impatient or waiting for something important to happen don’t pace the room staring at your watch. Practice a simple rehearsed movement as slowly as possible or sit quietly and visualise yourself doing the movements and the time will fly by. And you will stay young-looking.

Copyright © 1998 by Michael Davies