"The Deep Root: Finding Stability in a Changing World with Tai Chi

The Deep Root: Finding Stability in a Changing World with Tai Chi

Unless you are walking around with your fingers in your ears, saying 'la la la la la. We're standing at the edge of a massive transformation—though admittedly, it's hard to look dignified while peering over a cliff. The rise of Artificial Intelligence is reshaping our world faster than we can update our résumés to include "prompt engineering" as a skill. As AI cheerfully takes over tasks we once thought were uniquely human (goodbye, my dreams of being irreplaceable at spreadsheet formatting), many of us are feeling a profound sense of unease, like we're floating in existential limbo. At the same time, robots learn to write poetry better than we can. Admittedly, nobody wants to read an AI poem because it isn't human, filled with all the messy humanness of feeling and struggling to live with its joy, pain, and humanity, which in turn connects us to our own humanity.

We will be forced to question our purpose, our worth, and our place in this brave new world. It's as if someone had scheduled a massive earthquake beneath our feet but forgot to send us the memo about when exactly it will happen. On a personal level, this isn't entirely unlike other life upheavals—retirement, job loss, unexpected illness, death of a loved one, or that moment when you realize your teenager knows more about technology than you ever will. The difference? This time, we're not really invited to the party.

So, where can we find solid ground when the work we have oriented ourselves around may change to the point we no longer recognize where we fit?

The practice of Tai Chi and Qigong, with its emphasis on the subjective nature of experience, offers a powerful antidote to the anxiety and uncertainty of our age. Like a tree with deep roots, we can cultivate inner stability that allows us to bend without breaking, adapting to change while remaining true to ourselves. Much of our sense of self has been tied to what we do – our jobs, our companies, our achievements, and our contributions to the world. But what happens when AI can do many of those things faster, better, and more efficiently? Though we are not there yet, AI is learning at an exponential rate. Even the AI developers creating AI cannot keep up with the hourly advances. The question emerges naturally: If our worth transcends what we produce or accomplish, where does our authentic value actually lie? (Spoiler alert: it's probably not hidden in your LinkedIn endorsements.)

For centuries, Chan Buddhism and Taoist philosophy have been tackling the essence of selfhood and meaning, long before self-help books and productivity apps promised to solve everything. These traditions teach that genuine worth springs not from worldly accomplishments but from our fundamental being—the unchanging core that exists whether we're crushing our quarterly goals or can't even remember where we put our keys.

Should we outsource all of our thinking to AI? Our memory, our creativity, how we move, our struggles to learn something new, and the feeling of accomplishment that comes from hard work. Why on earth would we want to outsource our thinking? The struggle to connect, create, and learn about ourselves from ourselves Is our connection to life. My guess is that there will be a premium paid to individuals who cultivate craftsmanship, intuition, attention to detail, effective communication, and meaningful connections.

As we cultivate ourselves through practices like Tai Chi and Qigong, we remind ourselves of the intrinsic value of our experiences and realize that our purpose is not about mindless output, but about the hard work of being – being present, being compassionate, and being connected to ourselves and the world around us. With all our flaws, all of our struggles, and moments of genius, it comes down to our frailty balanced against our own strengths.

This is where practices like Tai Chi, Qigong, and meditation come in. They offer a way to bypass the limitations of the rational mind and tune into the collective intuitive internal wisdom that resides within us. Where does that intuition come from? Who knows? It is a mystery, a ghost in the machine. People have been describing this mystery for millennia.

For Instance, in the flow of postures of Tai Chi movements, we can experience multiple levels of ourselves. Think about the movie "Contact," written by Carl Segan. To make a long and beautifully told story very short and for the purposes of this article, the mystery started with a little pulse coming from outer space; upon close inspection of the pulse, patterns were revealed, and those patterns then were then found to have more patterns that contained language and mathematics, then those new patterns became 3d instructions on how to build a vehicle that gave access to an ability to travel through space-time.

Though I barely gave this synopsis of "Contact" its due. This is how the Original Tai Chi of Chang Song Feng, the Nei Chia Chüan, was created. It works on multiple levels simultaneously; it is encoded in a holographic manner, where you become the holograph. The movement through postures is only the original pulse; as we dive deeper into the patterns woven within the form, we find instructions on memory, imagination, health, life force, intuition, awareness, mental process, breath, authenticity, diet, connection, relaxation, the importance of play, and the importance of our humanness, to mention a few. Is it easy to learn? Yes! Is it hard to learn? Yes! The conscious effort of learning and playing becomes the vehicle to uncover the power of consciousness and your own uniqueness. In other words, you Want it to be hard! In my experience, as well as that of hundreds of people engaged in these ancient arts, the learning process produces a sense of calm and peace. The world becomes bigger, brighter, and happier.

So the next time AI writes a sonnet in 2.3 seconds while you're still struggling to remember if "their" or "there" is correct, take a deep breath and step into your Tai Chi practice and play. Remember that while AI might be able to calculate pi to a trillion digits, it still can't experience the simple joy of finally nailing that one tricky posture you've been working on for months—or discover that when you improve your awareness of breath, your memory suddenly gets sharper, your seeing your intuition kicking in at just the right moments, and somehow your experience of the world actually does become bigger, brighter, and happier. In a world racing toward artificial everything, perhaps our greatest rebellion is to become more authentically, messily, and gloriously human—cultivating our own craftsmanship and imagination with attention to detail and genuine connection to others through the delightfully difficult process of simply being present. And if that means moving slowly in a park while everyone else is frantically updating their LinkedIn skills to include "AI whisperer," well, at least you'll have better balance, deeper awareness, and a mysterious sense of calm when the robots inevitably take over. Resilience in the face of change requires that we think differently, that we begin to explore our experience, our craftsmanship, our story, so that we don't willingly give up that which will be the thing that sets us apart.

#AI, #taichi, #consciousnes, #humanity