Both qi gong forms and my Druidry work went off without a hitch this morning. The qi gong in particular was elegant, since I was using button and zipper. the effect of this is to lengthen the spine, tighten the abdomen, and compress the torso. All of these appear to apmake my energy work more effective overall.
As it was cold in the house, I grabbed a tshirt to put on while doing the work — admittedly this shirt is too small, but wow. I fill it quite differently than I did a year ago or more. It used to be that when a tshirt was too tight, the most prominent feature of my body was my belly. My belly is still there, but the most prominent feature now is my upper chest and shoulders. My body is changing shape, slowly but surely.
It was in the tai chi form today that tags got wrong, though. About halfway through I thought, “wait, is this right??” I realized that I’d skipped something, something important. I’d left out a section, or I’d done a section twice, I wasn’t sure which it was. All that I could really confirm is that I was in the wrong position and facing the wrong way.
And I did what any lazy practitioner would do. I tried restoring the work by doing any old section next. I made it one of the easy segments, the section with cloud hands, to try to get back on track. Nope…. That didn’t work. OK, I thought, how about the section with golden pheasants? and so I began that sequence. As I twisted around through golden pheasants,vi caught a glance at the clock, and realized I’d been fumbling around for about three minutes. The whole time I’d been working on the form was no more than five minutes.
Somewhere between Opening Posture and Fair Lady Works Shuttles, I’d gone wrong. It had taken me less than two minutes to go wrong. I’d rushed, and I’d not paid attention, and I’d fallen asleep in my work. I’d tried to do it on autopilot, and I’d failed. As I should always fail.
Finally, after casting about for other options, I stopped the form. I had some water. I took some deep breaths. And I started over, from the beginning. This time, I slowed down. Two full breath cycles here, three there. I tried to find a new rhythm to the work, this second time around, and I proceeded deliberately. And slowly.
And it was better. Not perfect. Not even particularly good. But ordered. And correct. And now I know what my new “bare minimum” looks like.
