The annoying little grabber in my left lower back has returned; it’s probably the psoas muscle tightening again, and pulling stuff out of alignment. It occurred to me this morning that the short form that I do is only really working one side of the body effectively. Sometime in the near future, I need to work out the set of steps that will transform my tai chi form from being primarily on the right side of the body, to making it be primarily on the left-hand side of the body, by reversing the actions or reverse-engineering them somehow.
I’m not sure how to do that at this point, but I imagine it will involve a lot of trial and error, and various complications. I’m down for that, though. I think I can do it. Today, after the end of the official tai chi movements, I tried working through some of the motions in the opposite direction from normal; so that instead of cycling around the room clockwise to do four attacks to the four corners in counter-clockwise motion, as happens in the series of movements called Fair Lady Works Shuttles, I cycled around the room counter-clockwise to do four attacks to the four corners clockwise.
What a mess. That one will require some serious cleaning up to get right.
But, I also did some very effective solo postures, like doing the Windmill Kick with my left foot up in the air instead of my right foot. A few repetitions of that, and my left hip was almost normal again. And the spins in a counter clockwise direction on the left foot instead of on the right foot… Some of them will trip me up until I get them easy enough to do — which will take probably six months to a year (ahem) of practice — consciously, but without having to remember, “right, that’s that one. What comes next?”
It’s interesting, now that I’m in the last month of my year of intentional practice, that I’m beginning to see ways forward, and ways to expand or continue my practice beyond the first year. It’s like, I’m standing in one of the major vestibules of an elaborate palace, and doors off the main room are open in every direction, and I can see depths to this palace through open door after open door after open door… there’s a different experience of tai chi through each door… but from here, I really have to decide which direction to go.
