Tai Chi Journal

A Status Report

I seem to have reached a stage in my Tai Chi trajectory in which there is not a lot of growth to report.

It is now the Monday after Easter 2005, a weekend which, for this practicing Catholic, furnished a lot of diversions from my now-habitual daily concentration on Tai Chi. Last Thursday — Holy Thursday — was our last of eight classes in this session, though there will actually be a make-up class this coming Thursday because of an earlier snow-out. Then we have over a month off to practice what we have learned. Another 8-wk. session kicks off in early May (May 12, I think, after a "freebie" class on May 5).

A Morning Cup of Tai Chi

I gave one of my best friends for her birthday a book by John Bright-Fey called A Morning Cup of Tai Chi. I myself don't have this book, but it seems like a good one. My friend has a probable knee replacement in her future, so it's not clear how soon she can actually take up Tai Chi, but when and if she does I am convinced it will help her keep her other knee.

I selected this book for her because she has told me she tried taking a Tai Chi class a few years ago and was admonished by the instructor for "not keeping up." That was it for her! She never went back. This book looks like one that will let her proceed at her own pace and not worry about being "too slow."

Which I can definitely relate to myself. I am still having trouble putting together the movements of the form we have learned, mostly because I find their details hard to remember. In last week's class, with main instructor Brad off somewhere on a business trip, his assistant Jeremy took over. There were only four students there, and I got some personal attention and useful advice on how to do the first movements of the form: Embrace the Heavens, Beginning of Tai Chi, Single Ward Off Left (including Hold the Chi Ball), and Double Ward Off Right. It was a big help, and I told Jeremy after class I feel he has an excellent teaching style.

But what with one thing and another, although I have been doing my individual exercises, today has been the first day I've practiced the form since the class four days ago. I found the when I came to White Crane Spreads Wings, the movement following the Single Whip Left-Lift Hand sequence, and preceding the first Brush Knee, I was at a total loss as to how to accomplish it. So I cued up the relevant section in QuickTime Player (having captured it from the DVD using Snapz Pro) and played it over and over, trying to mimic it. It was a good (re)learning technique.

QuickTime Player gives one the ability to bracket any segment of a movie, called a "selection," and play just it. You can loop it to play again and again, even looping backward as well as forward if you choose. What you can't do is play it in slow motion ... unless you use this AppleScript script:

     tell application "QuickTime Player"
         activate
         tell movie 1
             play
             set rate to 0.5
         end tell
     end tell

If you can do that, you have all the control over the movie that the DVD Player app gives you, and then some (because of the bracketing and looping capability). I find this is a real good thing. I plan to use the technique a lot in the future.

On another topic, I find that my Tai Chi practice is influencing my posture for the better. Some of this is unconscious, while some of it requires a conscious adjustment on my part. I am adopting the theory that Tai Chi "wants" me to (in the words of a Tai Chi and Alternative Health magaizne article I have read, "Acupressure Points as Related to Tai Chi") "pluck up the back and sink the chest." In other words, don't stick your chest out, but do "open" your back and lengthen it, as you visualize a golden thread attached to the top of your head pulling your cranium heavenward.

This attachment point, called bai hui or "Hundred Meetings," is on the front-to-back center line of your skull where it is intersected by a perpendicular line connecting the tops of your ears. In other words, it is far enough back from your forehead that the imaginary tug from the golden thread is not going to lift your chin. It's going to lengthen your back instead, or at least the back of your neck.

In doing this, it helps if you consciously tuck in your chin, releasing, relaxing, and opening the throat. The idea seems to be that adopting the right posture has something to do with Chi circulation: "If you get the posture right, then the Chi is active."

Adopting this posture seems to change my breathing for the better almost automatically ... I breathe more from the belly or dan tien, less from the chest. And that seems to clear my head and give me a calm sense of well-being.

It also seems to make me look better. I'm getting some very unaccustomed admiring glances from sweet young things at the mall, in restaurants, etc., these days. I'd hate to tell them what an old fuddy-duddy I am. But I'm also aware that Tai Chi has made my body look more "buff" than it has in years. So I'd say that Tai Chi has a whole lot of little side benefits, in addition to making you healthier in mind, body, and spirit.

The downside is that this posture has not yet become automatic. I have to think, "Remember to lengthen your neck," or something like that, or I find I lapse back into my usual "wrong" posture. Also, it isn't easy to stay in an unaccustomed posture for a long time, even with conscious effort. The muscles eventually rebel. Again, this is something that will improve only with perseverance.

posted by eric @ 11:27 AM