What is the mind?We have come to another of the most talked and thought about qualities of conscience life. In the West, we have come to think of the mind as being completely constituted within the brain in our head and as a consequence, we concentrate on determining the process of interplay between the brain and its control over different areas of the body.
In the East, the human beings three qualities of SPIRIT (ethereal energy which resides in the three treasures, head/brain, heart/viscera and belly/hara=tan tien and represents Heaven), CONSCIENCE PERCEPTION (feelings are led by the heart, sustained through the nervous system and analyzed and stabilized by the brain), and BODY (made of mundane energy in which the future is constituted in the legs, the present in the viscera and the past in the head and represents Earth) constitute the mind. Emphasis is placed on the wholeness of being and how qualities in a person result from an integration of conscience life through the balance and growth of internal energy.
As a result of this understanding, clearly determining the mind's qualities relies less on how to break it down into exact reactions and more on how to combine its natures. The brain is a major controller of mind. Breaking down qualities or defining them to achieve a clear conceptual of how things work is inherent in the East as it is in the West. However, a difference in perceiving what constitutes the mind has a major impact on what you do to affect the mind.
In the practice of Tai Chi Chuan, the emphasis on mind development enhances our ability to extend attention and is achieved through regulating relaxed body action and quiet awareness (stilling the thoughts in our head) with the intention to adhere, stick, connect and follow.
Another major quality of mind has to do with the central nervous system's ability to handle stressful situations. In today's highly pressurized world, people have the technology to do many things. Along with technology comes greater stress not less. We work more than ever in one spot -often at a desk or computer terminal- and our attention is moving faster than ever from one thing to another. Additionally, we are bombarded on all sides by energies given off by appliances, microwaves, and radiation. Today more than any time in history, true peace of mind has become a difficult thing to find. A quiet mind combined with energized blood strengthens the nerves through which chi is expressed [5] and this contributes enormously to calming the mind. By achieving a quiet mind while in action, we constitute the inside as receptive (Yin), yet actively expressing internal energy and the outside as active (Yang), yet, retaining external softness and receptiveness. Within Yang is Yin and within Yin is Yang. Thus, Tai Chi is stillness in action and action through stillness