When I woke this morning, it was in the blissful cool of air conditioning.  The bedroom in my house becomes stiflingly hot; the windows are the wrong size for modern air conditioners — one is way too narrow, and the other doesn’t open wide enough for an air conditioner.  So, there’s one in the living room, and it’s strong enough to cool the two rooms. But that meant that when I went into the office to do my morning tai chi — aieeee! It was like a sauna in there, unbelievably hot and humid and uncomfortable.

I almost gave up right then and there.  But, first I did the druidic work for my grade. That gave me some gumption. Then I did 10 push-ups, badly, which seems to be the appropriate step to doing 10 push-ups moderately well, and then maybe 25 push-ups acceptably or eventually even well… maybe 100.  And then I did the first of the qi gong forms.

And I almost gave up again.

As I said, the weather is warm and the house absorbs warmth as a sponge absorbs water (in the summer — in the winter, it cools off unpleasantly rapidly). The first qi gong form was enough to trigger the Dweller on the Threshold, and I felt a strong desire to stop. My stomach was in turmoil, my hands were sweaty (I’d left sweaty palm prints on the floor during my push-ups), and I was not looking forward to continuing. I didn’t want to.

But I didn’t stop.  I went on to the second qi gong form.  And somewhere n the middle of that form, I got past the Dweller on the Threshold, and felt fine about continuing to do tai chi.  It became easy to continue despite the heat and humidity and crunchiness I felt.  Nice.  The tai chi form was perfectly easy after that, although I did rush it a bit.

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