There’s a clarity after illness, as good sweat rolls down your body under your t-shirt, that the liquid pouring out of you is carrying the last of your sickness out of your body. That’s how I felt this morning. Most of my symptoms are gone; I’m a little sniffly, a little teary-eyed.
I did three iterations of the form, and both qi gong forms. The first time through the tai chi form, I concentrated on brreathwork. This is when the sweats started. G.M. Chishti, in the Traditional Healer’s Handbook, says that Avicenna talks about the healing crisis — that there’s a movement in any illness when there’s a crisis: of vomit, of diarrhea, of tears, of sweat, of coughing, of bloody nose, and so on — when the illness reaches its peak and the body achieves homeostasis by provoking a rebalancing through some outward and visible sign. On the one hand, I don’t know that I should be taking medical advice from the interpretation of a 12th century medical doctor; on the other, this one piece of knowledge definitely matches my own experience.
The second iteration, I concentrated on the outward and transverse forces in the tai chi form, in the arms. This is a formal and serious way of saying that I worked my muscles hard; the sweat really came this time, hard. I was dripping by the end. And the third iteration was gentler, but still pretty hot. By the end of the third working-though of the form, I was…
Mostly dry. I mean, I was sweaty but my clothes weren’t really damp. Yet try had been in the second iteration. Which means that for a very brief period of time I was hot-hot but not sweating. And my warmth dried off the sweat I had generated.
Right now, I’m normal temperature. And none of the symptoms that have plagued me since Sunday night are present. At all.
That was a good sweat.
