Tai Chi notes, October 9, 2018

On Saturday, I asked about the leg movement in the transition from Jade Girl to Grab and Tuck Robe. The answer turned out to be that, if your jump is short enough that you have good control, then you can land with a narrower and higher stance, and then should move your leg afterwards, while if you jump farther, then you’ll have to land lower and wider.

I also noticed that my teacher seemed to be turning his hip during Dantian Change during the Xin Jia form; he said that I should focus on turning my Dantian and I shouldn’t turn my knees. So I think that, in practice, that means that I should move more of my body to the right, and turning my hip is okay. And, watching that on Tuesday, it seems like the same thing applies in Lao Jia, too, I’d just been not paying attention and thinking that you should only turn your waist.

I was thinking more about doing Dantian rotations; going from 20 to 50 seemed like a big jump, but if I switch from 20 to 25 on my morning commute and then repeat that in my afternoon commute, then I’ll actually reach 50 pretty easily. So I started doing 50 at home over the weekend and have kept it up on the first two weekdays of this week, and actually things already feel different? So I’ll try to keep that up, I’m very curious how that will develop.

Also in terms of exercises, I’d been thinking I should do that squatting exercise before going to bed, but hadn’t actually been doing it in practice. But I’ve finally started to establish that habit, I have a three- or four-day streak now; unfortunately, I’ve already lost some leg strength from skipping it, so I’m only managing to do three repetitions whereas before I was managing five. But the important thing is establishing the habit, I’m sure once I’ve done that I can build it up more and more.

A couple of other things I was thinking about in class tonight: in the first Pound the Pestle, right after you stand on your right leg, I was thinking about what my right hand / arm does as it moves first back then forward. And I think I was moving in a way that jammed my right shoulder a bit, so I should do some combination of either not moving my right arm as far back and/or waiting to turn my body forward until I’ve started moving my arm; not sure, I’ll have to experiment. Also, during Grab and Tuck Robe, I should probably think about Peng energy when moving my right hand across the top at the end?