It may come as a surprise to a gym-rat that after 30 minutes of taiji, I’m sweating. On the one hand, it’s not much of a workout. “Move with your ligaments, not your muscles,” my teacher might have said (He didn’t, but that was because at the time he was fascinated by wrist locks, whereas I was more interested in the internal tradition [which is not to say he didn’t know the internal tradition – he once tossed me to the floor by pushing on my aura, rather than me]).
What amazes me, though, is that after a fair bit of time studying the energy paths of the tree of life, is how much I’m aware of the flow of energy through me patterns itself after that. It’s not a perfect match-up. The chi wants to go places other than the map, and I’m not insistent that it flow through paths that come from a different system. But I keep finding myself thinking, “Yesod is in the wrong place,” or “Geburah shouldn’t be so far forward.” Correcting these small errors in the next go-around does in fact improve one’s workings, I think.
[…] say. Still at it. It feels less useful to keep writing about the practice at this point. Back in Year One, I was trying to understand how tai chi’s internal tradition lined up with what I knew about […]