I did druidry this morning, followed by 20 squats and 20 push-ups. Then I did Eight Pieces of Silk and Five Golden Coins. Then, since this morning I did druidry and tai chi in the same room, I did four iterations of the form of tai chi that I do — one in each of the cardinal directions.
It’s silly to me that I’ve not picked up on this before. Actually I have, before, done push-ups and forms to the four directions. But it’s silly to me that I forgot this particular insight — which is that if I face the four directions, and do tai chi from each of those four starting positions, then I’m honoring my druidry and honoring my tai chi practice at the same time. More practice, more good practice, more better. Right?
This week I heard a speech about Jane McGonigal’s relatively recent book, Super Better. It’s about gamifying your life. Some of the elements of it are giving yourself power-ups from time to time, and quests, and challenges. A daily tai chi practice and druidic work are two of the ways I’m gamifying my life: if you read yesterday’s entry about making a bag and some tokens for my druidic ‘runes’, you’ll see that I’m recognizing that the work of studying magic has in fact helped make me into a Maker (and a poet, and a teacher, and a…). I think it’s a complicated relationship, really — because being a gamer is kind of what got me thinking about magic in the first place. And now, twenty, thirty years on from my first D&D game, I’m a practicing druid, magician, martial artist, and nominal cleric. Multi-class! And what am I doing with this set of skills? Gaming my life.
Huh.
