Consciousness and T'ai Ji...
 

I have done T'ai Ji Chuan on and off for most of my life. It seems I knew the principles and movements naturally since a child, so I sometimes wonder if I studied it in a past life, or downloaded it from the heavenly library in this life. At any rate, when I started at university aged eighteen, I began to take formal classes. Becoming conscious of the energy movements between people was one of the contributing factors to me having a mental breakdown. However I remained intrigued by the phenomena. I was studying mathematics at the time, another factor in my mental collapse, and both disciplines have remained part of my practice ever since. About ten years ago I began attending some classes that actively made use of energetic relationships between people without involving physical contact. The techniques were designed to move people about at a distance. Becoming conscious of this with my analytical mind became too much. I started to see and feel the manipulations and relationships everywhere, and being ruled by my brain, became overwhelmed and paranoid. I have since stopped the practice for my sanities sake. So my question is, are mathematics and T'ai Ji Chuan compatible? Of course I know they are, as everything is, but what practices do I need to do in order to integrate these two disciplines successfully, without going crazy? Thank you.

Why do you feel the need to intergrate them?

Consciousness and T'ai Ji...
 

That is a good question and I am still not sure how to answer it after some thought. The simple answer is because I want to be good at manipulating energy either for martial purposes or for healing purposes and I can't see a way of doing that without being conscious of it at an analytical level. What stops me from giving the simple answer is that I'm not sure that it represents a healthy desire, and I can, as I have been doing, go without pursuing such a skill. Letting the non-analytic part of me direct the manipulation of energy is probably the solution, however I don't want to loose the analytic skills that I have, which is why I ask about integration, however maybe being able to move between the two skill sets is the better approach? Thank you.