Reflections on where wisdom lives in the body.
If Nitzavim-Vayelech teaches us to stand at the center and then carry that center into movement, Ha’azinu asks what remains when the teacher can no longer walk beside us. Moshe is approaching the end of his life. He has taught laws, delivered rebuke, retold the journey, and prepared Yehoshua. Now he gives Israel something different—a song. This is significant. A law can be studied. An instruction can be followed. But a song can become internal. Its rhythm remains after the voice that first sang it has fallen silent. In the internal martial arts, there is a similar transition. At first we imitate the teacher’s posture and remember instructions: release here, sink there, turn from the center, listen, do not resist. With enough practice, those instructions begin to disappear as conscious commands. The principle becomes embodied. Eventually, we no longer hear only the teacher’s voice; we begin to feel the teaching from within. That is the territory of Ha’azinu.
EssayRosh Hashanah is usually described as the beginning of the Jewish year, but spiritually it begins somewhere deeper than the calendar. Before we can change direction, correct behavior, or make new commitments, we must first discover where we are standing. This is familiar to anyone who practices an internal martial art. Before movement comes alignment. Before issuing power comes listening. Before technique comes structure. And before structure can be corrected, unnecessary tension must become perceptible. Rosh Hashanah performs a similar function for the soul. It does not begin with detailed confession. That will come on Yom Kippur. Instead, Rosh Hashanah asks us to return to something more fundamental: center, orientation, memory, breath, and listening. The question is not yet, What have I done wrong? The deeper question comes first: From what center have I been living?
EssayIf Ki Tavo teaches what happens when practice becomes embodied, Nitzavim–Vayelech presents the next and perhaps more mature challenge: can we remain rooted while everything around us changes? The names of the two parshiot express the paradox beautifully. נצבים - you are standing firmly. וילך -and he went. Stillness and movement. Root and transition. Stability and change. In the internal martial arts, these are not opposites. The purpose of developing root is not to remain immovable; it is to create a center from which movement can arise without loss of organization. Nitzavim–Vayelech teaches the same principle spiritually: stand deeply enough that you are able to move forward without losing yourself.
EssayIf Ki Teitzei teaches us how to carry the center into the complexity of life, Ki Tavo asks what happens when that practice becomes sufficiently integrated that it begins to shape who we are. The name itself signals the transition: כי תבוא— “When you come in”. Ki Teitzei begins by going out; Ki Tavo begins by coming in. There is a beautiful movement here. We go out into the world, encounter resistance, complexity, desire, responsibility, and uncertainty, and then return changed by the encounter. This resembles the rhythm of internal martial arts: open and close, expand and gather, issue and return. Movement outward must eventually be integrated inward. The question of Ki Tavo is therefore: Has the practice merely changed what we do, or has it begun to change who we are?
EssayIf Parashat Shoftim teaches us to establish inner governance—discernment, boundaries, and an ordered center—then Parashat Ki Teitzei asks whether that center survives contact with life. The parashah contains an extraordinary number of mitzvot, moving rapidly from war to family, property, compassion, sexuality, commerce, labor, dignity, and memory. That apparent lack of order may itself contain the lesson. Life does not present itself as a carefully arranged training curriculum. It comes at us from every direction. The question is whether we can remain internally organized while moving through it.
EssayParashat Shoftim presents the foundation of responsible authority through judges, officers, kings and prophets - how do they function, how are examples of a fearful soldier or a mysterious corpse to be managed, and how does this all tie in to internal martial arts expression?
EssayThere’s a moment in zhan zhuang — standing meditation — where the legs begin to tremble. The mind screams quit. But something deeper holds. That something is what the Torah calls emunah.
TeachingThe Chinese concept of song 松 — deep, conscious relaxation without collapse — maps almost perfectly onto the Jewish middah of anavah, true humility. Both describe a structure that yields without losing itself.
ReflectionFor years I thought rest meant stopping. Then I started practicing tai chi on Shabbat morning — not the martial forms, but the standing. And I understood: Shabbat isn’t absence of movement.
ReflectionThere is a particular softening of the jaw that happens before a wise response. Both the Sages and the tai chi masters have been pointing at it for millennia, in different languages.
TeachingAbraham stood. Isaac stood. Jacob stood. In each case the Torah uses a verb that does not only mean upright — it means rooted, sunk, present at the feet. The internal arts would recognize this posture instantly.
ReflectionThe word neshama — soul — shares its root with breath. Long before language, before thought, before prayer, there is the inhale. It may be the oldest teaching either tradition carries.
EssayPush hands teaches a distinction the dominant culture keeps missing: the difference between giving way and giving up. The parsha of Vayishlach carries the same teaching, held in Jacob’s hip.
TeachingAt Sinai the people said we will do, and then we will hear. The sequence is strange unless you have practiced a form for years. The body learns first. The understanding arrives after.