What is a martial art doing in the office? How can tai chi be practiced on the farm?

Let's clarify immediately an indispensable point: those who thought of this interesting union, did not intend to supply weapons to put their colleagues out of business. In other words, we are not talking about delivering the same punch 1000 times and then trying it against the individual with whom we can less relate in teamwork. No martial application to take revenge on the colleague who took the floor at the last meeting. No fatal blow to the boss. No descent to snake to break through the skirts of the secretaries.

Seriously, let's try to understand what forms a sacred art can take like tai chi transposed into the company. What are the benefits, such as disadvantages, how much is maintained in the density of training and practice.

Tai chi and company: a lexicon at the service of another

Each environment enjoys its words, its lexicon of choice. The environment of Tai chi is figurative, extended, unspeakable; on the other hand it is a very ancient truth that the Tao, while it is named, is no longer there, is no longer present, is no longer Tao. The environment of Tai chi is internal and external together. The feet are like anchored to the hot center of the earth, the end, the head is like hanging from the sky. In the middle there is the man, with his vital energy ( qi ) which condenses in the lower dan tien (丹田dāntián, or Tan tien ) and is distributed through the other higher energy centers to then spray the limbs and organs.

The words of corporate training concern the structured activity of a company that aims to teach its staff specific skills related to it or its related sectors. The human resources (the employees) of a company become capital in the sense of the corporate wealth of professionalism, wealth on which one invests for a better return that touches both levels, professional and human.

Tai chi works on qi, preserving it, expanding it, as well as practicing qi gong, the hands sweat, the body warms up and energy flows at its best. The second is not given without the first and vice versa. Both increase the quality of life energy and when it is high, human beings immediately feel a global well-being. Being global, it also invests human relations in general, and duqneu also professional ones.

Another positive aspect of tai chi in the company: professionals can return to better design their eating habits, they will approach some basic nutrients and then rethink the close relationship between health and diet. Martial artists know how important it is to fill up with really nutritious food and drink. In Taoism and in traditional Chinese medicine the energy of food is identified with the ideogram Gu qi. Approaching the martial art, those who work in a company could begin to review the concept of the meal, they will learn not to consume it in a hurry or in front of the computer, to decline the offer of yet another sandwich, to know the best food combinations in relation to internal organs.

The "empty" company in the Taoist sense

Words from one area serve those belonging to another sector. What does it mean in the case of tai chi chuan in the company?

A company that moves people who maintain a certain adherence to their bodies is an "empty" company, in the Taoist sense. What does it mean?

It means that those who work in a similar place create a void within themselves to welcome events . Changes are not blamed, they are absorbed. It means learning to turn fears into perspectives. Learning to fall to the ground, learning to do it with the body is also learning to face the unexpected call, the negative trend, the response generated by third parties with the sole purpose of sinking.

In this regard we highlight an interesting blog: Martial training. The author of the blog is Walter Allievi, instructor and coach of the Italian Sailing Federation, a martial art practitioner since 1990. After a degree in Economics and Commerce at the Bocconi University in Milan, he specialized in Experiential Training at the ComunicationExperience company. Today he is NLP Practitioner at Richard Bandler's Society of NLP and trainer in behavioral subjects (collaboration in work groups, personal development, team building) and project management carries out his activity both in companies, as a consultant, and in training companies, bringing in their work both professional and sporting experiences.

The blog is very interesting because it collects reflections on experiential training, sport and martial disciplines in the company and clarifies how interesting the combination of the skills that Allievi has acquired in its experiential training path can be combined with practice and love for the movement to which the cells of his body have dedicated themselves with pure passion.

Tai chi in the company: the risk

There is a risk, a risk more than imaginable: if the tai chi enters the company, the sacred value of the martial art is lost . But this is the risk that "things" in general have when they spread around the world. No one can control the progress of a millennial discipline . General Sun tzu, who lived between the fifth and sixth centuries. BC, how will you ever know that your treatise today is handled by some as a newsstand book, a second reprint Harmony? However, this does not mean that aware and attentive readers of " The art of war" have disappeared .

There are masters who nowadays continually betray the dense sense of a martial art and do it with actions of brazen self-promotion, losing sight of what they started from: the body. The same goes for the students, who forget the practice and rely on the master's personality. This happens, paradoxically, in schools, which should be the sacred temples of martial artists.

If it is true that Taoism loves the paradox, then the perfect, and therefore perfectible, pupils could be just business professionals. They could be given dense, concentrated and sacred Tai Chi lessons. The assimilated gestures, once removed the suit, would remain also under the shirt, to the height of the belt, up above the knot of the tie. Because energy flows under and over the skin.