Tai Chi Journal

Going step-by-step-by-step

Let me again recommend the fine book Step-by-Step Tai Chi, by Master Lam Kam Chuen. As I have mentioned in earlier posts, what with one thing and another I've had a hard time putting individual Tai Chi moves and movements together into anything resembling the opening of the Yang-style long form. For one thing, I've had the flu.

Master Lam Kam Chuen

For another thing I'm pitifully slow at learning "kinesthetic" stuff, by which I mean (the dictionary says) "a sense mediated by end organs located in muscles, tendons, and joints and stimulated by bodily movements and tensions; also : sensory experience derived from this sense."

For yet another thing, because I know I'm bad at kinesthetic stuff, I tense up when I try it ... and that makes things even worse.

Master Lam's book is accordingly just at my level. It truly is a "step-by-step" approach to Tai Chi, and it works.

I started out less than three weeks ago doing (nearly every day) the initial set of exercises labeled "Fundamental Movements." At first, simple though they seem on paper, they were hard for me to learn and do. They were even more strenuous than I imagined they were intended to be.

They were hard to learn partly because I was being asked to formulate in my mind (true Tai Chi mavens would rather say "visualize") the movements I wanted to make, the associated breathing rhythms, etc. That was hard when the movements (not to mention the co-ordinated breathing) were unfamiliar to me. And because the movements were not in my usual repertoire, my musculature resented them, making me "feel" the exercises more than I do now.

There was a bad feedback loop going on in which one problem fed another. By the time I got done with the set of exercises, I had completely exhausted my mental ability to "visualize."

Still, they made me feel (a) good, physically and mentally, and (b) like I had accomplished something. So I kept doing them.

Furthermore, I can tell these simple exercises have strengthened and at the same time lossened up my lower back, which is a godsend in and of itself.

Meanwhile, I definitely wasn't getting at all jiggy with the form movements, so I tended to give them short shrift.

Naturally, that has led me to have an even more negative attitude toward the form.

But there's a saving grace here! The Step-by-Step Tai Chi book ramps up, eventually, to doing a modified Tai Chi "form" which has basically the same movements I've been balking at!

After taking one through "Fundamental Movements," then "Strength and Motion" exercises, then "Balance and Movement" exercises — and, I assume optionally, "Working with a Partner" — it introduces "The Form."

The Form begins (speaking very loosely) the same way the one I've been taught begins. There's the Tai Chi Starting movement; then Hold the Ball (Right), which we have been calling Hold the Chi Ball; then Ward Off (Left), Roll Back (Left), Press (Left), and Push (Left); and then the mirror-image of the above: Hold the Ball (Left), Ward Off (Right), Roll Back (Right), Press (Right), and Push (Right).

I have faith I can work my way up to learning these moves the step-by-step way from this excellent book. It has ample, fine illustrations and clear text descriptions of what to do. If I could learn to feel comfortable with "Fundamental Movements" in just a few weeks, the sky's the limit ... as long as I'm in no particular hurry!

Oh, and there's one more saving grace. The exercises in the earlier chapters of the book are carefully chosen to "greatly aid your ability to learn a Tai Chi form at some later stage." Many of them are just moves extracted from the form. For example, the Turning the Balloon exercise acquaints you with the final portion of the Hold the Ball movement that occurs in the Tai Chi form. So this book is intentionally designed to offset the difficulty a klutz like yours truly has in assimilating the Tai Chi movements: it "pre-digests" them for you, so you don't have to.

posted by eric @ 2:12 PM