Tai Chi Notes, July 9, 2019

Last week was spent fighting the cold. I was starting to get better by the end of the week, so I did go to Tai Chi class on Saturday; didn’t feel great, my lower back was tight and hurting, and in general I didn’t feel the normal body sensations (energy, sinking, relaxing). I could sort of tell that those sensations were available on the fringes, just hard to access.

Because of the tightness, I went through the full silk reeling series on Sunday as well. I only did the first form three times, but that felt like a reasonable victory given the time I spent on Silk Reeling and given my energy level. I tried to do some Lotus Wu Ji later in the afternoon, but I just couldn’t get into it; I probably should have pushed through, I wasn’t actually hurting particularly (and in particular, my lower back actually wasn’t causing problems for that), I just didn’t have the mental fortitude for it.

Unfortunately, the cold refused to go away; I actually felt kind of lousy yesterday (and was coughing a ton), so I worked from home today, didn’t do Wu Ji over lunch, didn’t go to Tai Chi class. I did at least put in 20 minutes of sitting meditation; a little distracted by coughing at the start, but that actually got better as the session went on, it was a surprisingly successful session. (Which reminds me, I did 30 minutes of lying down meditation on Sunday; that was less successful, though not a complete loss.)

Hopefully this cold will end soon and I’ll be able to start working on getting my body back in shape, but who knows when…