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While practicing T'ai Chi, there are spaces, sometimes prolonged, when I seem to slip
into a deep hole with nothing in it. No thoughts. No images. Only a wavelike sensation
saturating me, surrounding me. At first it surprised and confused me. I'd cling to the edge
of the precipice and think: Shouldn't I be thinking? Shouldn't my thoughts be headed
somewhere? Where is this taking me? No landmarks. Only a vibration--long, slow,
smooth waves that are experienced, not seen or heard or even felt in the usual way. And
that's where the center is touched. That's where it all comes from.

I like to start out with only clay. No ideas. No fancy tools. No expectations. Just my hands
and a big piece of well-wedged, well-aged clay with some life in it. I used to call it
stream-of-consciousness working. Now I think of it as stream-of-subconsciousnesss. If I'm
lucky, that's what it is. Start with a tabula rasa and let the oracle within me and the clay
speak. I surprise myself.

Margy Emerson draws on sixteen years as a professional potter and nine years of
studying Tai Chi to show what the process of making art and the practice of moving
meditation have in common--and what they can teach us about an approach to life.

The author spent six years with her original teacher, Kao Ching-hua, who learned the art
in pre-Revolutionary China. Kao always emphasized the practical applications of Tai Chi
Chuan.