Sometimes, when I’m doing the form, I have this sense of being a skeleton, with muscles over that, and tendons; and over that, skin.  It’s a series of very discrete layers, which move in synchrony with one another, but aren’t necessarily connected. There are external signs that this is so, on those days — I hear joints creaking, tendons popping; I feel stretches in one muscle or another; I see the surface of my skin moving.

Then there are days like today.

I didn’t hear any popping or thunking sounds from within my body. The floor creaked, a little, but the creaks weren’t coming from me.  The motions were fairly fluid; I was able to stand with my pelvis tilted most of the time.  I can put my fingers on the floor (though not my palms yet) when I do the toe-touches in Five Golden Coins and Eight Pieces of Silk.  There’s a growing sense of integration.

I’m a collection of parts.  But those parts are a whole, too.  Increasingly, the parts are operating in a way that makes me more wholly me, as well.

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