In the Animal Spirit deck by aritst Kim Krans, which I purchased sometime around 2021, there is a card for the raccoon. Raccoon energy is about wearing a mask, about hiding, but it’s also playful. On the card, Krans mentions that many artists choose to wear masks in the form of an alter ego. She asks us readers to consider how an alter ego might help us on our own journeys.
I took this thought deeply to heart, and I considered how an alter ego could help support me. In the largest sense, I realized it could help me by creating a protective barrier between my sensitive, actual self and the world. A costume, a glittering facade to ward off any darts of hurt that might fly my way as I put myself out there.
Her name is Madam Ant, my alter ego. She’s pretty formed at this point, I’ve been conceptualizing her and occasionally dressing up like her for the past few years. She’s based on the 80’s British Pop Star Adam Ant, but a woman version. She is a singer, she loves to be onstage, she loves leading parades. She might like to be the Grand Marshall of a parade someday, but for today she would love to be a drum major.
Somehow this persona allows me to speak my truth more clearly. She stands for love, joy, and self-expression. Madam Ant is more direct than I am, she takes no shit. At least, in theory. I haven’t taken her onstage yet. Speaking of being onstage, her outfits are fabulous. She wears lots of velvet and tulle, corsets and feathers, sequins, glitter, lamé. Leggings, fishnets, boots, tutus, ribbons. All the clothes, all the sparkles. There is freedom in how she dresses.
She needs a band, this Ant. She’s scared to actually look for a band– or maybe she just isn’t quite ready yet or doesn’t know how. No, I think she knows where to start, it’s just a matter of starting. She’s just scared to start because she cares so much and this is a big deal to her.
And that’s where Michelle comes back in. Michelle can text some friends and see what Antmusic they want to play. And then Michelle puts on the Madam Ant hat when she plays with those friends and *POOF* Madam Ant is playing with a band.
And sure, it may not be a band that is fully formed or ready to perform, but it will be the beginning of the band that might someday be fully formed and ready to perform.
My tai chi teacher says that the art of tai chi, and the philosophy behind it perhaps, is all about harmonizing polarizations. And we always start by harmonizing polarizations in the self. One way to think of polarizations is to think in terms of projections and hollows–places in our self where we are projecting too much or too hollowed out. Each projection has a corresponding hollow. The projection or hollow can be mental, emotional, spiritual, physical.
As a martial artist, I’m especially interested in the physical manifestation of projections and hollows. In order to conduct energy cleanly through our bodies, say for a strike, we want the cleanest physical and energetic body structure we can muster. Imagine your striking arm is a hose. In order for a hose to transmit energy cleanly, in this case, water, it needs to be open and more or less straight. Once there is a kink in the hose, the water energy can’t get through and gets stuck. That kink is a projection/hollow.
In martial arts we call the energy running through our bodies chi. If our arm is kinked in a way that is causing a projection or hollow, our chi can’t get through, it gets stuck in our bodies, and the strike doesn’t come out clean. Our main concern, though, is not that the strike to the opponent won’t be effective, it’s that we will injure ourselves from repeatedly striking in a way that is not healthy for our bodies. I believe that a lot of martial arts injuries are a result of repeated stress on misaligned bodies, joints especially.
On a more mental or psychological level, though, I find it so deeply interesting to notice where in my life I’m struggling with opposing parts of self. I’ve always wanted to be a mom, and now I am, and I find it terrifically exhausting and occasionally soul-crushing. And yet, I still want to be a mom. (Just, could I have more days off?) I feel like I’m really good at a lot of things, but also never good enough. And all my issues around my dad and money? That stuff is an internal battle of deep, conflicting beliefs about self-worth, sexist family roles, and stress vs. relaxation.
So, maybe this mental battle is why it’s good to get out of my head and back into my body. My teacher believes it all comes back to the body anyway, and I tend to agree. The internal struggle in my body right now, the place where I have the most to grow, is my upper back. Sometimes in my practice I can relax and open my upper back, and I feel the support of my teacher and all of those who are behind me. It is a beautiful, rested-in feeling, a feeling of love and belonging. And yet, it feels too good to be true, so I don’t trust it, and rest back into the tension of trying to project my heart forward, out of my chest.
This heart projection is from a place of need, but is also attached to pride. It is a desperate seeking of love and attention, and a need to feel worthy of that love and attention. The hollow behind it feels like I’m desperately trying to catch something that is always too far away. The way this particular polarization plays out is that when I come to people wanting something from that place of need, they find it distasteful, and they don’t want to offer me what I’m asking for.
But when I rest in to the back, allow my heart to settle down into my pelvis, and find the harmony in the clarity of my back alignment, that feeling of love and support comes over me. The feeling comes from the ground up, behind me, like a cloak of flowers is blooming around behind me and up over my back. I feel loved, at peace, and neediness disappears. And even though I may be by myself, I don’t feel alone, but connected to everything around me.
Recently I returned from a weeklong training with my teacher in Canada. My friends and training mates J and N were with me, and the three of us got a lot of quality time with our teacher. When people ask me what we practice with our teacher, I tell them it’s tai chi, but it isn’t tai chi in the traditional sense. We don’t learn any forms or combinations–I don’t know the 108 or the 24 form, I don’t know the precise movements for cloud hands or brush knee, I don’t know how to part the wild horses mane or hold the ball. But I’m getting pretty good at standing.
Our practice together always begins and ends with wuji standing, which is standing meditation in tai chi body position. If our standing isn’t clear, none of our movements will be clear. I’ve been practicing this art for five years now, and I’m finally starting to feel depth and clarity in my standing. So are J & N. Because we’ve finally gotten to this place of clarity as a group, we got to move on to partner work during our time in Canada. This included beginning to practice push hands, my favorite martial game.
Since we don’t get to see our teacher in person often, she stressed that we focus on putting our hands on her and each other and feeling the “one feel” of tai chi that we’re going for. The first time she asked me to put my hands on her shoulders, she demonstrated the feeling of “settling in” to the earth in her own body. It felt as if her whole body was melting downward, sinking. The feeling was like lying down in a bed after a long day and letting everything slacken and relax, except she stood standing, and was still solid in her skeletal structure. When I felt it I thought, “Oh, I can do that,” and I allowed my own body to be invited into the sensation of resting into the earth. I let my legs feel really heavy. The feeling was a letting-go of stress and tension. There was ease and joy in the relaxation. Relief.
We then moved on to offering/receiving. From standing, we allow our hands to open in front of us and feel the sensation of offering ourselves outward in all directions to the universe. We then switch to the sensation of receiving from the universe in all directions. As we practice this, we notice whether we are, in general, in a place where we want to offer or want to receive. Which one is stronger? And then, we practice feeling both at the same time. As we offer, we receive. As we receive, we offer. This is the transcendence of duality that is perhaps the core magic of tai chi. We are never one thing, one direction; we practice always being present in paradox, in all directions at once. This presence offers a liveliness and spontaneity not available if we’re stuck in one mode of being.
A lot of the work we do is emotional–noticing held beliefs and how they manifest as patterns of tension in our bodies, minds, and spirits. But this time in Canada, while we did touch on emotional holding, we practiced more of the physical building blocks of good standing and push hands practice. I kept great notes about all of these things–here is a page from my book:
These basic building blocks of standing and push hands include:
• Allowing all the joints of the body to open (feet, ankle, knee, hips, spine, shoulder, elbow, wrist, fingers, neck — everything)
• Resting the internal organs back and down into the pelvic bowl
• Sternum resting down into the pelvis
• Ribcage resting back and down — avoiding popping the ribs forward
• Chin resting down to open the “gate of control,” the place at the back of the head where the vertebrae at the top of the spine meet the cranium
• Kidneys are full
• Energy at the backs of the knees
And then, when we add partner work into the equation, we also must remember:
• Shoulders rest back into the housing as strike moves forward (this one was a game-changer for me.)
• All strikes are initiated with the feet: the arms and hands tend to get hungry and want to lead. Don’t let them!
• Elbows sink and seek the earth (another game changer)
And then, when we touch in with someone, we touch in on the bone level. Our teacher talks about the different levels of touching in to someone else’s body: skin, muscle, bone, energy. The skin level is a surface level, my skin is just brushing my partners. The muscle level is the place where most martial artists touch in during push hands. My muscle meets their muscle, and we tend to get locked into tension. At the bone level, my skeleton is directly connected to theirs. This is where we want to be, at the bone level.
Connecting in at the bone level, I can feel my partner’s skeletal structure, and can notice where their bones our out of alignment. From my connection with my partner’s forearm, I might be able to feel that their left knee is too far forward. I can then consider where my partner is lacking energy–in this case it might be back energy in the knee, or side/side energy–and I can move to unbalance my partner by offering pressure in the direction where they are lacking energy. Of course, a good partner will notice I’m doing this and fill the energetic void, so the idea is to be so subtle that they can’t feel exactly what I’m doing, OR to find two or more places where my partner is lacking and switch between trying to unbalance them in both places. Meanwhile, I have to attend to my own alignment, or I won’t be able to feel into their bones at all.
There are so many considerations, so many potential points of contact, so many energetic directions that the game is a never-ending journey of understanding what it is to have and move a human body.
This fall I’m considering teaching kids martial arts classes. A big sticking point that has kept me from teaching martial arts classes recently has been that I’m no longer part of a traditional martial arts school. This means that anything I teach kids will be sort of system-less, not part of a larger martial organization. It also means that I will have to create my own curriculum. However, I know so much material, so much about fighting, self-defense, discipline, movement, building confidence and awareness, that I have plenty to teach. And sharing these things with kids is always fun and rewarding, whether in a traditional martial arts school or not.
So this morning I sat down to brainstorm what material I would want to share with kids. A partial list is in the photo above. I would start by teaching standing still and calmly (discipline, standing meditation), and bowing (respect). Respect is deeply important in the martial arts, and I would share this notion with my students; we respect ourselves, we respect our training partners and teachers, we respect the natural world around us. I love that martial arts often offer us a set of values like respect, and I would pass my understanding of these values along to my students.
Cultivating a good martial attitude is also paramount. When we show up to practice, we are first and foremost practicing managing our own ego. So how do we show up when we’re about to do a fighting drill with a partner? Are we scared? Excited? Wanting to show off? Wanting to “win?” (Personally, I experience all of these things.) Can we learn to hear those thoughts and feelings, allow them to rest, and show up with our best, most present selves? Open to the drill and the possibilities within it? For me, showing up with a quiet ego and calm presence is still a big part of my martial journey. If I can pass this notion on to kids, it will support them in many parts of their lives.
And then, there’s the moves. I no longer have any official martial arts forms to pass along, but I have plenty of techniques to share–all manners of kicks, stances, strikes, and footwork. These will be the building blocks of our practice, and we can create many partner drills and freeform martial movements around these techniques.
Lastly, my primary concern when teaching kids is safety. I hate the thought of a kid getting hurt in my class, so we will focus on safety from the get-go. I’ve sustained many injuries over the course of my martial training, and, looking back, I believe many of them could have been avoided if we had focused more intently on keeping ourselves and each other safe. I would like to teach my students a way to practice martial arts that keeps them safe and healthy, not injured and stressed.
So that’s it for now. Writing and posting helps me sort of “think out loud” about these things, and get comfortable sharing my progress. Thank you for reading!
Uninterrupted showers are still not a guarantee in my house. We recently moved to a place where my husband and I have our own bathroom–we used to share one with our kids. Back in the old place, I often had to let kids in to use the toilet while I was in the shower.
But even in the new place, my daughter will come and find me while I’m in the shower, often with a complaint about her brother. “I can’t help with this problem while I’m in here,” I tell her, but she stays and airs her grievance. To calm her down, I play a game with her where she draws on the outside of the shower glass and I follow her finger from the inside, where it leaves a drawing in the condensation. We draw hearts and smiley faces together. Then I nicely ask her to leave, and she does, but she sometimes waits for me right outside the door so I can solve her problem the second I step out of the bathroom.
I don’t like being this available to other people. There’s no one else in my life besides my kids whose questions I would entertain while bathing. I’m realizing I need to set firmer shower boundaries with my kids, in order to protect my own sanity.
Because a nice shower is such a lovely experience. The soap smells good, the water is hot, I can blast my tunes and sing along. And I can dream, that for at least ten minutes, I might remain peacefully, blissfully, alone.
Michelle Folk Johnson 