Today, and in fact for the last few days, I’ve noticed that I get out of bed cold, and I finish my tai chi exercises hot. Like, very hot. Almost uncomfortably warm. There’s a physical transformation which causes me to go from chilly in a low-temperature household to completely warm — such that shorts and t-shirt seem perfectly acceptable (admittedly, going out on the porch to fetch yesterday’s mail immediately makes pants, gloves, hat, sweater and coat a reasonable choice).
Not only am I uncomfortably warm, but I seem to have hit a particular stride where tai chi is effective exercise — for a long time, I didn’t feel that I was getting much benefit from it except some stretching; now it actually appears to be working to increase muscle mass and make me stronger. Maybe this is an illusion, but it doesn’t feel that way. Toe touches have finally started getting easy again, after a long time of feeling stiff and tight across my lower back and upper legs.
Last night I feel on the ice outside my house. OW. I fell on my bum, and my hip and upper thigh immediately felt sore and painful. Ow. No fun. I went to bed thinking that tai chi today would be painful and difficult. Instead, the pain in my hip and butt is about 10% of what it was when I went to bed; and tai chi didn’t twinge it at all. I think that the fact that I do tai chi daily has actually made it possible for me to bounce back from the injury with relative rapidity.
Since from a Chinese Medicine perspective, all pain is stagnant Blood and Qi, then having worked at better circulation of Qi and therefore Blood (TCM Axiom: Blood rides Qi) it fits that you would recover quicker from such an injury. (Arnica 200c, or even 30c, would have probably gotten that last 10%… just sayin…) It’s good to occasionally observe the real world operation of the foundational principles of the philosophy of Chinese medicine, at least it’s good for ME… you… well there’s always that 10% ;-)))