- Nada Surf, ‘Happy Kid’

My lack of progress, in life in general – not in anything in particular, has become palpable. The way I move around seems slow motion, with little spots speeded up like some crazy film on a broken projector.

Tai chi was interesting this morning, working a bit on turn-strike-parry-punch. I had been swinging my hip out too far. I knew I was doing it not quite right, I could feel the power go, but hadn’t taken the time to figure out why. It was very similar to what I was doing with repulse monkey: letting my hip slide outward instead of rotating in place and keeping my weight directly over my knee. That turn-strike is still really hard for me, though. Floppy wrist! Punches don’t work well with floppy wrists.

Edward was saying he had learned something new, a martial style or art that has you punching with your 2 ‘outside’ knuckles (ring & pinkie) instead of the 2 inside ones (index & middle). I tried shifting the force back and forth myself, with my arm extended like a punch, fist against the wall. It still amazes me when something I do with my arm or shoulder moves my hips or feet.

It felt good to direct energy somewhere out of me this morning, even if it was just against the wall. I think it’s all clogged up in me somewhere, physically, metaphorically, emotionally.

Today I was trying to pay attention to the arm part of the movement, as that’s where the last of the ‘dance’ feeling resides. The beginning of the movement has a lot of intention in the arms, but the whole opening up and ‘ta-da’ part of the end has bothered me for some time. Edward demonstrated for me and I got some insight – there’s more of a twisting open into that nice arms-rounded kind of pose than there is a spread out ‘ta-da’ thing. I’m sure I’m making no sense here, but it made sense this morning in class.

And as I haven’t seen a monkey in days, it must be working on some level.

We had been working on stances which have a lot of lateral stability, and it got me to thinking about the stability of this forward stance that tends to my heels or toes depending on where I’m at. It didn’t seem stable. So I started fussing around with how I might both keep my weight centered on my feet and my tailbone tucked in and lo and behold, I can do it. It uses some different muscles, but it feels great. Just a small change, millimeters, really, but totally different.

Edward often notes, as we come up out of the slouch, that we should feel our chests ‘opening’ as we rise. I’ve haven’t really felt anything I would call ‘opening’ before – til this morning, in this re-discovered stance. Very pleasing.

(Maybe when I’m 73, I’ll be as stable as this master!)

I still don’t feel the chi. I understand the concept, and I’m sure that it’s there. But my attempts to gather it in or focus it or move it or even sense it are going nowhere at this point.

Yesterday, we were doing some exercises on our backs, with knees bent, where we arched our backs to raise our feet. Curving your back the other way (tucking in the tailbone) makes your feet go back down. This was easy to feel since we weren’t standing on our feet. So I tried it while standing today, focusing on my feet as I alternately tucked in my tailbone and arched my back, imagining them rising up or sinking down as I did it, trying to correllate the feelings with what we did on the mats yesterday. There is definitely more ‘rootedness’ and more downward energy when standing with the tailbone tucked in, and I’m wondering if this might be my first glimmer of this chi thing…