A few days ago, I chose to work the subroutines — to know each set of postures that come back to a repeated leitmotif. Today I worked them doubly: there’s that main sequence of four moves:

• roll back
• press
• push
• [Buddha’s Palm] – technically part of single whip
• single whip

That keeps repeating all through the form. Its effect is to turn one around — wherever one is in the room, it aims you for the opposite wall or corner. Yet there’s an additional subtlety: as one comes out of Buddha’s palm into single whip, one can step to the inside or outside. The result is that the next sequence can be aimed to the left or to the right.

So, by adding that extra “single whip inside” or “single whip outside” one can double the length of the form, because now each sequence is repeated twice. The lungs were heaving like bellows at the end of this morning’s session. There was another curious effect, though: I used the whole room. There wasn’t a nook or cranny in the whole office that I didn’t have to step into, and I could have used even more floor space than I had.

Side effect: one of my students reports that he can see my aura, and that it’s quite wide compared with other people. Is this the taiji, or meditation, or both? I don’t exactly feel auras, but he says he wants to learn more. Hmm.

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