Yesterday was awesome in terms of tai chi. It was long. It was slow and deliberate. It was well-executed. It raised energy. It left me slightly sweaty. It left me with a strong breathing pattern. It cleared the beginning of an illness. Awesome.
So today is going to be awesome, right?
Not so fast.
Tai chi is really teaching me to let go of expectation. I didn’t go into today’s experience thinking “this will be fabulous.”. I didn’t go into today’s experience thinking, “this will be terrible because yesterday was so great.” No, I went in with this attitude — I am doing what I do every day, and maybe it will be good or maybe it will be bad, but it will be done. And that is, I think, the correct attitude to have upon beginning.
Afterwards, of course, it is possible for me to say that the tai chi form went all right, but that the qi gong form called five golden coins was especially good today. While doing the movements picking apples and bend the bow, I was able to engage my obliques with particular deliberateness. I think these are hard-to-master areas of the body that take a long time to respond to attention — have you noticed how many people in American society move from their shoulders rather than from their hips? Very odd.
