I did the tai chi form today at a pretty slow speed, except for a section that began with Golden Pheasant and ended with Diagonal Single Whip. On the one hand, it wasn’t that bad. For these moves, I probably only moved at a two-count or a three-count instead of a four-count. By the end of this sequence I was able to get control of the movements, and slow them down to the standard speed at which I’m trying to run the operation.
Even so, after several great days of running the tai chi form at about … what, 22 minutes? I dropped back down to 16 minutes today. By my own standards, I’m supposed to repeat the whole form at this point. Unfortunately, I don;t have another twenty minutes or so this morning to focus on getting it right! I didn’t think this part through — If I have done the work too quickly, there will be plenty of time to re-do the form. If I have done it mostly OK, but I still feel like I need to repeat the work… I can’t. I’ve used up the allotted time to do the repetition.
Which means that at some point today, I’ll be doing the form again. I wonder when that will be — given how hot the afternoons have been, it may not be until late in the day, after the sun is no longer beating on the windows and warming then house up like an oven.
update: I did better in the afternoon sequence. Pleased with the results. Not really sure I can speak to Christina’s request, except to say that I was warmed up and ready for this afternoon. The breath work was a little ragged in places, but essentially sound throughout. The speed was about what it should be, maybe a little fast. So far, so good.
Might be interesting to try to perceive the differences between the rising yang energy of the day, and the sinking yin energy of the evening.