Beyond Positive Thinking: Embrace Tiger
Long read (40 minutes). Enjoy the audio.. False cheerfulness makes me nervous. Read on to explore with me the path to real cheerfulness and how to get there in the following reflections on the practice of the Qigong and Tai Chi move known as “Embrace Tiger.”
When I see false cheerfulness, I cringe, and I want to run. The lower half of the face can be forced into the shape of a smile while the forehead and the eyes remain flat and unanimated. If you see this combination in a face: Run! Or, if running away is not an option, ask some questions in order to get some clarity on what is really happening. This disconnected smile (what I call a display of false cheerfulness) is very different from the smile that involves the whole face, the eyes, the cheeks, the mouth and jaw.
Person smiling genuinely showing the wrinkles around the eyes of a Duchenne smile.
The Duchenne smile engages the eyes as well as the cheeks and mouth.
The smile that features a fully animated face is known as the Duchenne smile in psychology, and such a smile has the tell-tale feature of engagement of the eyes – particularly, the small wrinkles that appear in the orbital muscle around the eyes will be full of life and relaxed. That is how you know the smile is real. Such a smile has an effect on the world!
When I have sensed a false cheerfulness in myself, I have been overly concerned with appearances and simultaneously deeply overwhelmed with something troubling me and possibly even over my head. I admit that there have been times in my life when I had a desire to show others that I am in control and everything is okay when truth be told things were not okay. In recent memory, there were some very challenging times when I was taking care of my ailing and aging mother in her final days of life while I was trying to hold down a 40-hour work week on top of all that. My mother had dementia and atrial fibrillation, and her condition required a lot of care, a lot of medical visits, and a lot of love. Her health condition was hard for her and for the whole family. For a full year, the family rallied around her making sure she was safe, and we cared for her as she grew weaker and more lost in everyday things. She hardly recognized our faces as she slipped away from us day after day. We had to be vigilant because she could innocently wander off during the day or start to do something to be helpful like sweeping the steps and nearly falling onto concrete as she teetered on the porch steps or cut herself while chopping vegetables and bleed and bleed because of the blood thinning medications. So, I was on and on high alert, as were other family members when it was their turn to care for and watch mom. The family was tense, and we all needed help with basic life things during that time up until our mother finally succumbed to a deadly stroke one afternoon during my watch. The memory of these times is now over ten years old, but we all remember these times as a family and as the time when it’s just your turn to deal with challenges and meet life as best you can and with everything you’ve got.
The time I was my mother’s caretaker I didn’t always smile through the chaos, but there were genuine times during her care that I did smile authentically. But during that same complex time, there were also times my smile hid the truth of my exhaustion and overwhelm, and the false cheerfulness was present. I didn’t think much about it, because like a lot of people in similar situations I was just trying to get through. But trying so hard to be positive felt weird and disconnected, and after a good while it took a toll.
The Challenge of Staying Positive
The pressure and desire to be positive can be a weight. Staying positive can be one more thing to do and feel bad about not doing. But the alternative of faking cheerfulness and a positive attitude can feel weird and confusing—which amounts to no real benefit. Sometimes staying positive is not straightforward, and it can take a few steps, a few tries, to get there. I believe that’s okay. There are many roads to Rome, many ways to get you through the tough times. Getting through challenging times is not easy, and especially handling a chronic health condition, which can be very demanding for you and your family, can take several steps to get through the day or even the moment. The bright side here is that sometimes this means discovering hidden talents and strengths in one another along the way.
Tense moments are a part of life, and certainly during these difficult challenging and culturally divided times, everyone is having their share of tense moments. Right now, it is not a matter of avoiding difficult moments but about being ready when they do occur.
What Resilience Really is
The word that is popular right now among wellness circles is resilience. Herbert Benson and his research team at Harvard recently “opertationalized” resilience in order to be able to measure it in people. The definition of resilience Benson’s team used is thus: resilience is “one’s ability to maintain adaptive functioning in response to ongoing, chronic stress of daily living.” The assumption behind this definition of resilience assumes that life is full of challenges and that ordinary life is stressful. Resilience amidst the ongoing stress really comes from adaptation. The thing is, resilience is an art, which means there are many ways to adapt, many ways to accomplish it. During the difficult times, there is an opportunity to respond to challenge in a creative way, and resilience is what can result. Along the way, you notice what works for you to be able to tap into a natural ability to adapt and flow with the circumstances.
Positive thinking, a positive mindset, and positive psychology are all associated with a growth mindset and resilience. A positive mindset is that part of the human experience that is focused on solutions and is often what helps us adapt. As such, a tendency to “look on the bright side” and to learn and gain life experience from whatever happens in life are considered attributes of resilient individuals. But it is also important to remember that life is dynamic, a moving target and basically alive, which means it changes. Stress can be thought of as a continuum where stressful experiences are relative and the natural human responses to life’s stresses can shift and change based on new information. There is a need to stay aware that things change. People and situations change. At any given moment, there are things that make us vulnerable, and there are things that make us strong. The combination of “nature and nurture” (our traits and characteristics and environmental factors) are always in play. In that spirit, is important not to lock into definitions and harsh ideas of what it means to be a “good person” or what “staying alive” really requires in the moment. Adapting to changes and an evolving situation can involve different parts of a person and many levels of being and experience. This describes the art of mental flexibility.
Moving Beyond Positive Thinking
So, “moving beyond” positive thinking is about pursuing a complete solution and about keeping in mind the multiple layers of getting through challenges and being resilient, which includes more than just positive thinking. Thinking positive thoughts is the tip of the iceberg or only one ingredient of the whole enchilada of resilience and wellbeing. In a way, this encouragement to notice what is really happening when life feels hard, and this amounts to being willing to reflect. This can feel like getting a glance versus taking a look to see what is there. It is being willing to look. What do you “see” when you look? You can start with the really basic feelings in the body, which then help you understand your unique body’s signals: What are your particular signs of sensory overload and too much? What types of things bring on the stress and exhaustion or overwhelm? I have noticed that my left knee can start to get sore when life starts to get hard for me, which has stemmed from misalignments in my hips and low back. If I start getting weighed down, I may have interrupted sleep, and my posture may suffer. I may skip exercise days in order to work. When both the low back and left knee start to feel twinges of pain, I now recognize that it is time to take a vacation. This has meant being both willing to look and feel and taking some time to scan the body’s horizon for truth signals throughout the day. Everyone is different, and you will notice you have your own set of truth signals. My husband is prone to indigestion when things start to feel especially stressful. Under stress, he has noticed that he suddenly starts breathing through his mouth more, like an athlete pushed to the limit and needing to make a time cut. Noticing a breath pattern like that can start to change it: doing a breathing exercise or talking to a friend can start to change his breathing and shift it back into calmer patterns.
It is just as important to notice when life feels okay and what gives you energy: physically this feeling of okayness is often accompanied by relief or a feeling that breathing is easy. Doing something you love or being with people you care about can help. I feel I naturally slip into this easy breathing pattern in the company of people I love, and also have noticed I breathe easy when I read good writing or get lost in good books. Pretending to be a monk in a monastery, I focus on seeking out this simple natural breath when doing chores or walking. My favorite time to do this breathing (in and out through the nose) lately is when doing dishes and sweeping the floor at the end of the day. I figure it is a good use of time, and it makes dish washing really interesting to make it a game of noticing only water and only my hands and body moving as I breathe and each dish, pot and container go to their place. That’s what you do in Tai Chi or Qigong practice: simply notice how the whole of existence moves at any given moment. The bonus that comes when breathing and noticing like this while I do dishes is that I create a little order out of the daily mess of dishes and food preparation. Quiet breathing feels peaceful, and it too can be a truth signal that comes after doing something that feels right, like tidying up your living space to be ready for another day.
In the framework of the contemplative practices of Qigong and Tai Chi, we say that these peaceful feelings in the body are signs that energy is flowing in a balanced manner, and this sense of balance characterizes health – everything in proportion, nothing in excess and nothing deficient. In this regard, the beautiful metaphor is to regard the body as a garden that needs different things at different times, like the seasons.
As a teacher of meditative movement, I have this notion of wellness and balance being characterized by positive thoughts being truly positive only if they can be expressed physically in the body or expressed as a gesture in real life. That is to say the truly positive energies and thoughts, fully embodied, have an effect when expressed. Like the Duchenne smile, a positive thought, truly and fully embodied, can change the world (your life) for the better, bit by bit and moment by moment. That is to say positive thinking that really has weight and bearing in the world is often tied to actions and future decisions. Often these actions and decisions can then trace back to the ideas, things and people you care most about.
Embrace Tiger
The Embrace Tiger move is one of the Tai Chi forms that I teach where you bring your hands to cross in front of your heart. It is a gesture of protection and rest. In the Tai Chi and Qigong forms I teach, it is a move that signifies transition.
Man with crossed wrists in front of the heart.
Embrace Tiger is a transition move you make by crossing hands in front of the heart.
Energetically, embracing tiger means accepting the fact that you are an animal – in the world and related to energy, natural forces, and of course other people. Animals are savage, messy, scary, dark, and alive. Animals eat other animals, and they wear no clothes. They are not like you at all. They don’t think or have jobs or wear clothes. And yet what humans have in common with animals is DNA. Humans have a lot in common with animals who play, fight, procreate and stay alive. Humans do all of this, too, in a human way. But what humans have that animals do not have is an ability to reason and consider the future and its myriad possibilities. Animals make decisions and have their “reasons” for doing things that are based mostly on survival. They plan for the immediate future. But humans with their reasoning faculty can read and write and plan for the survival of future generations. So embracing tiger means: remember the animal, think about the animal and what it is doing. Reflect! How is this animal doing what it is doing? What does this animal need? The way you embrace tiger can lead to the very thing that needs to happen next. It can be simple.
There is a Chinese saying about relaxation:
“Relaxation is who you really are where stress and tension are who you think you are.”
I appreciate this statement, because it speaks to the reality that thoughts can exist in states of relaxation or be related to stress and tension. In another interpretation, thoughts occur only during a state of tension such that you superimpose an idea over what is really happening. Relaxation can be thought of as a “thought free” moment or the time and space where thoughts are about to happen, which is actually neutral. So, this means that relaxation is not so much about chilling out and feeling good as much as it is about starting over and resetting the pieces on life’s chess board. A lot of what happens physiologically during relaxation involves natural processes like resting and digesting, restoring and healing body tissues, and regenerating energy. The human brain is in charge of orchestrating the body’s use of energy, and it does this not just with thinking, but through a complex network of structures that monitor and adjust the body’s physiology to be able to handle daily life’s demands. In a lot of ways, the brain can be thought of as the body’s energy accountant that tracks the body’s energy budget. Everything the body does requires energy. During relaxation (like rest and sleep), there are necessary processes to restore energy, and ideally these things happen every day. So, it makes sense to think of relaxation as who you really are, because during relaxation the body can be itself and do bodily things. The sages say that this is the secret to a long life and seeing things in this way can influence how you do things and what you do for fun.
Embrace Tiger is the move about embracing what is natural.
In the arts of Tai Chi and Qigong how you do things (how you do anything) is just as important as what you are doing in the moment. I think of this as making choices and also being mindful of how choices feel in the moment and also being aware of how those choices feel as you are choosing, before you choose and after you choose. Often, we just don’t go slow enough to notice these things, to notice how we feel. You can be all in love with a cute pair of shoes in the store, and after you buy the shoes, you realize they feel terrible when you dance (try to live your life) in them. So, keeping in my mind how things feel sounds like a no-brainer, but really it is also easy to forget in the moment when everything is happening all around you or when the life stresses of a chronic illness or challenging situation have become all-consuming.
At such times, making a commitment to stay close to what truly matters to you is a brave decision, and also the best decision when you run out of ideas or strength or even friends. That’s when the real work begins, and the best part is that you can find your hidden talents and find crystalize your values like a code of ethics you live by. In Master Hua-Ching Ni’s stories and meditations associated with the I Ching, the imagery of the tiger appears to represent that person who has decided to listen to a still voice within that encourages clear decisions and actions. Listening to that voice is a decision. According to the ancients, a tiger is someone who pursues the highest truth they know. David Jack, an exercise expert who has had a column for Men’s Health for many years, says anyone can “make a deposit in the bank account of greatness” when they practice self-care, exercise, and then actually put their fitness to use to be of service either for humanity or simply for your family or neighbors. This is another meaning of embracing tiger: deciding to do your best with what you have and with what you know.
Embracing Tiger can also be a way to handle thoughts, especially when negative thinking appears. Having a practical and simple way to deal with negative thoughts is useful, because negative thinking has a reputation of being unhelpful. But I don’t think negative thoughts are always unhelpful. I can say this differently: negative thoughts can sometimes be helpful when they are an expression or a pointer to things that truly matter to you. These turn out to be things you want to preserve and protect, like a mother tiger protecting her cubs.
Embracing Tiger to Listen Deeply
Listening deeply takes courage.
Embracing Tiger is useful when it comes to looking at life in a new way. Embracing Tiger can be a special way to handle complaining, for example, especially when complaining can be thought of as a particular kind of negative thinking that is especially unattractive in spiritual circles or with people who value positive thinking.
Complaining versus Conscious Complaining
Complaining is human, and it has a bad reputation in some circles. Complaining can be perceived as rude or somehow unspiritual or immature. A colleague once shared that his key tactic for getting people to do better in their job is to complain often and loudly. “Complaining gets you better service” is the advice this person was given by his grandfather who used the practice at restaurants regularly. The grandfather regularly sent food back to the kitchen at restaurants and demanded better. When he complained about the light or the noise, he got better tables and better, more attentive service. This was a method of giving a restaurant establishment some feedback about performance, and maybe it means the restaurant takes the feedback, applies the feedback, and performs better in the future. That’s the idea behind complaining here: it is basically telling it like it is. As a practice, in this light, complaining can be a way to see things as they are under a harsh light where nothing stands a chance of slipping by. I was shocked to hear my colleague describe this practice and how to apply it in places like the workplace, not just restaurants. I always thought this kind of complaining was an example of believing that “nice guys finish last.” Though I was shocked at the time, the point about “telling it like it is” stayed with me as a skill. But you can tell it like it is without cruelty even when it comes to restaurant dining. So in this regard, you can think of this as conscious complaining, which is a way of being honest and truthful about a situation. Being honest can often start when you feel the first twinges of needing to complain about something. In this light, complaining (starting to complain) can tell you that there is something that truly needs to be addressed in a situation, in your life. Conscious complaining is useful and can spark positive change. In the best sense complaining can be an attitude toward expressing feelings authentically, and not holding back. In a way, like that mother tiger protecting her cubs, it is like standing up for yourself, your body and your life.
But complaining can be a habit like anything else, and it can become an “old reliable” habit of dealing with life and life stressors by being vocal about things. So the word of caution with complaining is to make sure it is conscious when you do it. Habitual and frequent complaining can get out of hand and make a social atmosphere seem cutthroat and unfriendly, especially when complaining feels like dumping or being unwilling to see goodness in others and in life. Habitual complaing is when complaining becomes unconscious, and then complaining can be a way of hiding and avoiding things. Worse, complaining every day about the same thing basically means indulging or tolerating a bad situation while basically doing nothing about it, and this is the classic formula of doing the same thing every day while expecting/hoping for something different. Besides leading to no benefit, it is no fun to be around. Your true friends will tell you so. Your colleagues and acquaintances may “ghost” you and disappear. In that case, adding positive thinking to unconscious complaining (“Everything is fantastic!”) can feel contradictory and weird, like a disconnect.
At such times, what can you really do? There is a need to first see what is really going on and in order to see what really matters to you. This can take a little while, and you need to be on the lookout for it if you want to see it at all. This is the time to embrace tiger.
There is the story of complaining at the monastery that I really like as an illustration of embracing tiger. I remember this story about the monastery and the nun and the mop from Cheri Huber, a Buddhist nun and one of the best teachers of these things. This is my remembered version.
A Story About Conscious Complaining and Embracing Tiger
Each day when the nuns finished their morning sitting meditation, they got ready for chores. Rising off the meditation cushions, they felt their bliss and seemed to float out of the meditation hall. That’s when one nun saw the bucket full of water and a dirty mop sitting right in it. She thought: “This is so ugly! Why is this here??” And she went away feeling angry and hurt that other people in the monastery just didn’t care.
The next day, once again coming out of the meditation hall, people filed out, and once again that same bucket and mop were still there. They were beginning to smell bad. That same nun of before said, “This is so bad. I can’t believe it. No one cares. Somebody should really do something about this!” And she stormed out, angry and thinking that her days as a nun were numbered.
Finally, on the third day, once again at the end of meditation, as she walked out of the mediation hall, she saw that same bucket and mop. “That’s it!” she screamed in her mind. And totally fuming and angry, she proceeded to roll up her sleeves and take that bucket and mop and wash it with great fervor and violence that made it really clean!
She put the mop and bucket away and went about her business for the day.
The end.
Even though the story takes place in a monastery, this story is very much about ordinary life and the small things that can really get to you. The lesson of this story? It is okay to have your reaction. It is okay to feel. Feelings can be scary in others and in your own body and life, but they somehow can trace back to something important, something true, something that matters. In the case of the nun in the story, she wanted to believe the monastery was a place for caring people, and she wanted to see evidence of this. To her, caring is important. Similarly, keeping things clean is a way to express care and cleanliness is a way this person felt cared for. So, in the story she takes these things to heart, embraces the harsh feelings, and recognizes the values the feelings point to, in this case caring for others and feeling cared for. So, Embracing Tiger means taking that first step to feel (the thinking comes later): Get angry, feel helpless and upset for a moment. For a moment. Have your honest reaction. For a moment: Complain! Say to yourself, “Somebody should do something about this!” Then like the nun in the story, take your time to recognize that you too are somebody who can do something in life that affects the present and the future. In the story, it is three days before the nun remembers (has a thought) that she is very much somebody who can do something (take action) about the wrongness she sees. What you actually do could be very small, but what matters is what that small thing means for you. Even a small gesture that simply points you in the direction of where you need and want to go can bring you closer to preserving what is most important to you and bring relief and a sense of peace. “Action seals the deal,” the wise teacher said. Action is good for your brain, because it means learning in both body and mind and moving toward the future you really want. Actions mean “walking the talk.” This is the stuff that hope is made of: the feeling of hope arises when you know you are part of the solution, doing your simple part of the solution, because you work toward that solution today in your small way, whatever the case may be. Embracing Tiger means having your human life while finding a way to be part of the solution, which starts with the courage to feel and to recognize patterns in the environment and in the body. Then, having embraced tiger, you embrace solutions, act, and embrace hope.
Links and References in this article
https://www.newscientist.com/definition/duchenne-smile/
Park ER, Luberto CM, Chad-Friedman E, et al. A Comprehensive Resiliency Framework: Theoretical Model, Treatment, and Evaluation. Glob Adv Health Med. 2021;10:21649561211000306. Published 2021 Mar 24. doi:10.1177/21649561211000306