You have permission. Open it up. Add extra moves to your qi gong routines. Blend the Five Golden Coins into the Eight Pieces of Silk. Bust out the yin-yang meditation in the middle of the routine. Find the stretch in each pose, but find the grace between each pose as well. You have permission.
You have permission to stop and see the photograph of your father and grandfather on the bulletin board. You have permission to hold the pose and notice the hand-made card from your mom. You have permission to be surrounded by beauty all the time. It may be fierce beauty, it may be dangerous beauty, but you have permission.
You have permission to bust out of the constraints of the tradition, and find your own moves between the tradition’s moves. But remember: the tradition is important for the beginner. No one puts up a building without scaffolding. No one makes a realist painting without some preliminary sketches, even directly onto the canvas. No one expects a two-year-old to read and write without some time to learn the alphabet, and the numbers. Rome was not built in a day.
You have permission to bend, wrangle, and play with the forms you have been given. But remember to hand down the tradition. Even if the tradition is chaos, or broken, or incomplete. Five Gold Coins. Eight Pieces of Silk. Tai chi form. Yin-Yang meditation. Magnum Mysterium meditation when the time is right. Recognize, in the tradition, that there is a scaffolding for the newcomer to climb, possibly high into the sky, until she has grown the wings necessary to fly on her own.
