The Memory Palace of Chi
Chai tea and Tai Chi: a tongue twister, the first involving the tongue and the second some twisting. Chi running, on the other hand, is a whole different kettle of fish. So what does any of this have to do with my goal of learning the long form of Tai Chi? Our brains are associative in structure, driven to seek connections. From words to ideas to shapes––you name it––your brain is pattern-hungry. Have you ever seen the face of Elvis in your peanut butter and banana sandwich, or Madeline Albright’s eyebrows in a low hanging cloud? If so, your brain is doing just what it was designed to do: voraciously hunting for patterns in everything it encounters.
The memory palace is built on this blueprint. Invented by Greek poet Simonides of Ceos around 500 BC, it’s arguably the most enduring memory trick known to humankind. And it works like this: take a place that you know really well, like your childhood home. When you want to recall a list of anything, you imagine yourself walking through your childhood home (or yurt if you live in the outer reaches of Mongolia) and room by room you fabricate a bizarrely memorable scene along with the item you’re trying to recall (the raunchier the better according to the ancient Greeks.) For example, if you’re trying to remember a particular vegetable on your grocery list, you might imagine Ronald McDonald in your living room, doing inappropriate things to a bunch of broccoli.
Brain-wise what’s happening is your grocery list (barely hanging on to your short term memory, like Sly Stallone in Rocky XX) is able to hitchhike on the long term memory of a room you spent so much time in as a kid. Luckily, your long term memory has seemingly infinite storage capacity compared to your short term memory, which overloads with 4-7 grocery items, and tends to short out on things like where you left your car keys. (This also explains why Stallone accidentally left his pet turtles Cuff and Link from Rocky 1 in the back of a Delta MD90 doody pocket).
So you can see why goal #3, learn all 109 Tai Chi long forms, would be a daunting task without the help of Simonides. But it gets even better because those clever Chinese Monks already named the Tai Chi forms bizarrely memorable things like Carry Tiger to the Mountain 抱虎歸山, Cloud Hands 雲手 (三度, Needle at the Bottom of the Sea 海底針, Jade Girl Works at the Shuttle 玉女穿梭二度, Empty Doody Pocket 手揮琵琶 Buy Some Hand Sanitizer 野馬分鬃 and so on.
As I begin to practice my Tai Chi forms, I am mindful of practicing oh so very slowly––no wait, even slower than that–– and allowing my Chi to properly mylenate:
….Childhood home
Living room
Ronald McDonald
Creepy clown hand bringing
Warm cup of chai tea
Jade Girl Works at the Shuttle
Tongue twists in delight…
The memory palace is built on this blueprint. Invented by Greek poet Simonides of Ceos around 500 BC, it’s arguably the most enduring memory trick known to humankind. And it works like this: take a place that you know really well, like your childhood home. When you want to recall a list of anything, you imagine yourself walking through your childhood home (or yurt if you live in the outer reaches of Mongolia) and room by room you fabricate a bizarrely memorable scene along with the item you’re trying to recall (the raunchier the better according to the ancient Greeks.) For example, if you’re trying to remember a particular vegetable on your grocery list, you might imagine Ronald McDonald in your living room, doing inappropriate things to a bunch of broccoli.
Brain-wise what’s happening is your grocery list (barely hanging on to your short term memory, like Sly Stallone in Rocky XX) is able to hitchhike on the long term memory of a room you spent so much time in as a kid. Luckily, your long term memory has seemingly infinite storage capacity compared to your short term memory, which overloads with 4-7 grocery items, and tends to short out on things like where you left your car keys. (This also explains why Stallone accidentally left his pet turtles Cuff and Link from Rocky 1 in the back of a Delta MD90 doody pocket).
So you can see why goal #3, learn all 109 Tai Chi long forms, would be a daunting task without the help of Simonides. But it gets even better because those clever Chinese Monks already named the Tai Chi forms bizarrely memorable things like Carry Tiger to the Mountain 抱虎歸山, Cloud Hands 雲手 (三度, Needle at the Bottom of the Sea 海底針, Jade Girl Works at the Shuttle 玉女穿梭二度, Empty Doody Pocket 手揮琵琶 Buy Some Hand Sanitizer 野馬分鬃 and so on.
As I begin to practice my Tai Chi forms, I am mindful of practicing oh so very slowly––no wait, even slower than that–– and allowing my Chi to properly mylenate:
….Childhood home
Living room
Ronald McDonald
Creepy clown hand bringing
Warm cup of chai tea
Jade Girl Works at the Shuttle
Tongue twists in delight…
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