I did my tai chi this morning with a very deliberate care. One step at a time. Deep Breath. Another step. Deep breath. It’s amazing how often I ‘forget’ about breathing deliberately during tai chi.
Even with that deliberateness, though, it’s easy to rush. I think of Box Ears with Fists as about the halfway point of the form. The first half of the form up to that point took about twelve minutes; the second half took four minutes. Slow down. What’s the rush?
I think this is going to be key to my practice over the next few months — to work so that the second half of the form takes the same length of time as the first half, or maybe even slower.
Breathing during the practice is an interesting concept. We recently had a T’ai Chip practitioner join us at one of our classes, who has studied extensively with one grand master. This gentleman told us just to breathe and not think about it — just breathe naturally. But, we have beginners in our class (aren’t we all), and in fact, we decided to continue to remind people to breathe. Because it’s easy to forget to breathe when you are concentrating on the choreography. And even when you have the choreography down, we just think tying in the breathing, and all of its nuances, to be helpful.