Sometimes I wake up and start doing tai chi according to a clock, and I’m always surprised by how much time has elapsed.  I’ll go into the qi gong forms knowing that it’s 5:07 am, for example, and come out and discover that it’s now 5:55 am, and did those three forms really take that much time??  I didn’t even break a sweat, after all.

And then there are moments like this morning, when I woke and started doing the qi gong forms, and then the tai chi form, and I think, “wow, this is really good, I’m getting all the snaps, crackles and pops out of my joints, this is going to be such an excellent workout!”  And then I come back to the only clock in the house — my bedroom, bedside alarm clock, the one that’s been waking me up since junior high school — and it’s only been fifteen … no, thirteen minutes. Wow.  What happened to time?

It really was an excellent tai chi session.  But it’s hard to believe that when the tai chi form itself is supposed to take seven to twelve minutes all by its lonesome… and the two qi gong forms should take ten minutes each.  It’s amazing how much subjectivity in tai chi is reduced to a time-value: “Did it take this long? Then it was a good workout. Slowly, slowly is the rule.”

Even more amazing is that a year into this process, and I still can’t do two things:  be clear about passing time, and be clear about whether I’m moving slow or fast.

Things to work on.

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