Tai Chi Journal

First Impressions of Tai Chi

Overall, my first impressions of Tai Chi are that it is (a) rewarding and (b) challenging.

(This is being written the day after my first real group class with our Tai Chi master, Brad. I've been Tai chi'ing nine days now, since the introductory session a little over a week ago. Most of my Tai Chi'ing has been doing the fundamental exercise movements from Step-by-Step Tai Chi by Master Lam Kam Chuen.)

First, the rewards.

The main reward has been a noticeable improvement in how I feel. I'd call it feeling more "buoyant." I'm not just talking about how my body feels, but my mind as well.

As for my body, it feels stronger, more supple, more in shape. I find that I was more out of shape than I knew, most crucially in the Tai-Chi-crucial areas of the knees, lower legs, and ankles. You especially need for those parts of the body to be strong, supple, and "confident" in their ability to stay in control, because Tai Chi form depends on being able to move and shift weight slowly, which means keeping in balance and control. That's hard for me right now ... but I guess that admission should go in the "challenges" section below.

I should note that there are a number of possible explanations for the greater sense of buoyancy and well-being, in my case.

(1) I've changed my eating habits, for unrelated reasons. I've had a chronic problem with stomach pain and have finally decided I need to be eating five small meals a day, not two or three big ones. That seems to have reduced my stomach problems, thereby making me feel a whole lot better.

(2) There's something invigorating about meeting and overcoming the challenges of Tai Chi. See below for more.

(3) There's undoubtedly a "placebo effect" at work. I believe Tai Chi will help me, and so Tai Chi does help me. (So I say, long live the placebo effect!)

Even so, Tai Chi is advertised as increasing mental/physical well-being by (a) altering the brain waves to facilitate a state of wakeful relaxation and (b) reducing physical tension. There's also something about the "energy" of the body, the "qi" or "chi."

Those Chinese syllables are both pronounced CHEE. In fact, they're different English renditions of the same word. The "qi" or "chi" which is body energy is said to flow through various pathways in the body. These pathways are such that tense muscles and joints choke them off, preventing the proper flow of energy. Tai Chi works to releive the tension and get the energy flowing aright.

This "chi" is not the same word as the "Chi" in Tai Chi. The former actually ought to be written "ch'i," with an apostrophe. The apostrophe tells how to pronounce the "ch" and thus the word: CHEE. The "Chi" in Tai Chi contains no apostrophe, so its "ch" really ought to be pronounced like a "j."

So, the phrase "Tai Chi" really ought to be written T'ai Chi — with an apostrophe in "T'ai" — to get the "correct" pronounciation, TIE JEE. But that's problematic, since most Westerners don't understand what the apostrophe's for, which after all has nothing to do with how Chinese is really written, anyway; not using an alphabet, Chinese needs no apostrophes.

And it's also problematic since most Westerners don't say "TIE JEE"; they mispronounce it "TIE CHEE."

I point all this linguistic stuff out because you will run into books that use the apostrophe in T'ai Chi and/or encounter people who pronounce these two Chinese words the "right" way.

And, to make things even more confusing, there's another way to transliterate Chinese into English.

In that other way, which is called Pinyin, the name Tai Chi (or T'ai Chi) is rendered taiji. That's hard to "mispronounce," admittedly. Only trouble is, if you say it that way — "TIE JEE" — 9 Westerners out of 10 will reply, "Oh ... you mean TIE CHEE!"

Knotty linguistics aside, I feel like all of this good-health stuff is starting already! I would therefore say that Tai Chi is a form of "therapy" that begins working noticeably in days. There are so many therapies for which you have to wait weeks or months to see any benefit from them.

Now, the challenges.

One challenge is that I am having a hard time with the balance, coordination, etc., needed to do the rudiments of Tai Chi form we are being taught in the weekly class. Think of doing a choreographed chorus line dance involving steps, turns, arm movements. Now think of a film of the dance slowed down to half speed or slower. Except that you are required to do the dance that slowly, without any help from the camera.

And the movements are carefully designed to be hard to do at that slow pace ... hard to keep your balance, hard to move just enough and at the right speed, without overbalancing, hard to keep your arms, hips, feet in the right synchrony.

What happens is: you do them anyway, as best you can. And the instructor will come to you and change your position for you if you're too far off the proper form ... which slows things down even further as he fiddles with the forms of this pupil and that pupil in succession.

And it's hard, at least for me, simply to remember the sequence of moves that make up the early part of the Yang short form we're being taught.

My explanation for such obtuseness on my part: I'm way short on athletic ability. I think athletes develop a sort of "body memory" which "records" sequences of movements, once made, and allows effortless replication thereof. I don't have that.

As an aside: my current project is to latch onto "cheat sheets," by which I mean books, DVDs, etc. that show the proper moves in the proper order. Brad, my instructor, is burning DVDs for us of himself doing the form. I hope to get mine next week. Meanwhile, I've located a commercial DVD supposedly of same. I ordered it online, but it's an oddball DVD title that may take longer to reach me than waiting for Brad's.

As for books, it's impossible to determine online what books might really help me by giving profuse illustrations and easy-to-interpret descriptions of the form ... so today I'll be visiting libraries and bookstores in search of same.

So the biggest challenge of Tai Chi, at least for me, is the big step up at the beginning from being a total klutz, out of shape, with no athlete-like "body memory."

My second biggest challenge is that, just as I have no "body memory," I also lack "body awareness." To give an example: I have noticed that many of the Tai Chi moves and exercises make the bottom of my back feel stiff and fatigued — not actually in pain, but, let's just say, tightened up waaay too much and ready for a good long rest. Stretching this part of my body releives the discomfort ... until I start doing more Tai Chi stuff.

So Brad last night told the class (and I think he meant me as much as anyone) that one should always keep one's shoulders exactly over one's hips. That keeps the lower back loose and happy. On the other hand, if one carries one's hips forward of one's shoulders, one has back woes.

Well, as far as I knew, I didn't do that. Not me ... except, when I stood sideways before a full-length mirror this A.M. as I was doing my morning Tai Chi exercises, I saw that when I thought I had my shoulders right over my hips, my shoulders were actually way back behind the hips.

That's what I mean by "no body awareness." Another example: when we were doing the "form" last night, there were several spots when we were holding our arms and hands a certain way. The best I could tell, I was holding them exactly that way. But nuh-uh. Brad had to keep coming over and adjusting them for me. Again, it was my lack of "body awareness" coming to the fore.

Any other challenges? Well, one also has to make sure to do the exercises/moves properly for the specific reason of avoiding injury. When I was experimenting with the early exercises in Step-by-Step Tai Chi, I misunderstood one of the postures and gave myself stiff, semi-painful knees for a couple of days. I, like a lot of middle-aged folks, have bothersome knees that get easily irritated. Put too much strain on them, and they bark at me.

So not getting carried away and doing moves I'll later regret is a bit of a challenge.

A fourth challenge is to remember to be still at the points in the exercises where stillness is called for. Master Lam Kam Chuen writes:

The interplay of stillness and movement is fundamental to Tai Chi, as it is to life. You will find that each exercise begins and ends with standing still for a few seconds. This is not an empty pause between the exercises. It is part of the exercise. Please don't skip ahead if you are feeling fine or are in a rush. The stillness is essential. It is not empty. Without it, your movements will be without energy. Both the stillness and the movement are your Tai Chi.

And the fifth big challenge is breathing. Breathing properly is as important to Tai Chi as moving properly. And, just as moving properly is in part a question of moving slowly, breathing properly is all about breathing slowly.

Which means each time you inhale or exhale lasts longer — way, way longer — than what you're accustomed to. And as you progress, your breathing (supposedly) gets even slower. I mean, unbelievably slow, while still continuing to happen (no breath holding allowed).

Needless to say, just that part of it takes huge amounts of training. I find that right now, I can't exhale deeply enough to let me inhale deeply enough to prolong the inhale long enough to suit Brad. That will come in time, I know, but right now it's a challenge.

So that's five challenges. (1) Poor basic balance and co-ordination. (2) Remembering sequences of moves/no "body memory." (3) No "body awareness." (4) Avoiding injury. (5) Breathing slowly and deeply enough.

Part of the reason I'm keeping this online, blog-style journal is so other complete Tai Chi newbies might find it and realize that, if they feel Tai Chi is a big, big challenge, they're not alone!

But it also has big, big rewards, some of which begin manifesting themselves just about right away!

posted by eric @ 8:14 AM