Today, this was my routine: two short Sun Salutations from Yoga: Standing Pose, Mountain Pose, back bend, toe touches, high plank, low plank, cobra, downward dog, upward dog, standing pose. To say that I looked like an awkward duck does a disservice to the duck. No matter.
I followed this with two iterations of the form.
I then did Five Golden Coins. It wound up being Six Golden Coins: I added in a postural routine from Eight Pieces of Silk by accident.
Then two more iterations of the form.
Then Eight Pieces of Silk. I did the piece that had accidentally gotten inserted into Five Golden Coins again, because that’s how these things should be done; don’t move them from place to place within the routine unnecessarily.
Then two more iterations of the form.
Then twenty-five push-ups. These sucked. I did eleven, and then something in my back twinged, and I was afraid I’d done something awful. A pause suggested that it was just a muscle-release, nothing horrible. I did nine more, paused again, and did five more (bad) push-ups. Twenty-five. Soon I’ll be able to do 25 without pauses or back twinges.
Then two more iterations of the form. I followed this with a time-check; 30 minutes on the dot. I went back to the office, and did two more iterations of the form, for a total of 40 minutes of tai chi.
So, a total of ten iterations of the form, two qi gong forms, two short yoga pose-series, and twenty-five push-ups. All in 40 minutes.
I need to slow down my tai chi. That’s one of my first takeaways from this morning’s practice. Ten tai chi sequences of 66 postures, divided by 40 minutes, is around 36 seconds apiece… and I did some other stuff in there. On the other hand, I hit the desired level of sweat and intensity in there; I can do this.
