| | While I continue to wait for Technorati to send me their instructions on how they want me to format this blog, i thought I'd discuss an interesting turn my life has taken.
My avocation has been tennis. There was a time when it was tennis just about every day of the week. It didn't matter that I reached a plateau and never got any better, I just kept on playing. I was hooked. There were a thousand reasons, but mainly I got the endorphin rush from the exercise and I also never became bored. Running and hopping on treadmills always bored me to tears. In fact, except for lifting weights, there really wasn't any other kind of exercise that I liked. It all bored me silly eventually.
Except for t'ai chi. I took that about fifteen years ago and truly enjoyed it. I had learned more than half of the Yang long form (which takes forever to learn because the style is so exacting), and then the whole school fell apart. The person running the place had little business sense and he had a meltdown. The students scattered far and wide and I was too busy with my job to figure out where they went. So, I never continued.
Now, I've found a new school and started up again and I must say it's just as wonderful as it ever was. The teacher is completely different. The style is totally new (Chen, not Yang), so the movements are new. The studio is smaller and has no mirror. Everything should feel foreign, but instead it all seems like an old friend. The studied movement. The slow, disciplined action that transitions from one shape to another in seemingly effortless fashion--it's all there. And I just love the way it looks so beautiful and easy, yet it's a killer on your muscles. Our teacher introduced one new move last Wednesday and my neck and back haven't been the same since.
Yet it's productive movement. If you believe in the movement of chi, which I do, it's beneficial to the body. I've already experienced that in the reduction of various symptoms I've had. This made me curious about chi gong, the cousin of t'ai chi that is performed almost standing still. It is almost completely dedicated to meditation and the movement of chi. Very difficult to learn, it is also extremely powerful when done correctly. I remember being in a Japanese restaurant and watching a man bend spoons with nothing but chi gong. And, no, this was not a Yuri Geller trick. Chi gong masters have done things much more impressive than little parlor tricks than that. But it takes many years to learn such skill and I doubt I'd ever have that kind of patience.
Still, it's been interesting to put down the tennis racquet once in a while and move slowly and smoothly, thinking of nothing but the present. I still do run around the tennis court, pounding my legs and knees, banging my arms and shoulders, and I can really feel the difference now in the way I use my body. The Western way is all about power and winning. The Eastern way is simply about being.
I think I like the Eastern way much more.
Lynn Voedisch,
t'ai chi, |
| | Posted 10/26/2009 9:34 PM - 37 Views - 6 eProps - 7 comments
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