Tai Chi Notes, October 15, 2019

I continued my tour through Damo Mitchell’s books with The Four Dragons. I’d put it off because, in his seminar that I went to earlier in the year, he mentioned that the sequence that he was teaching us there gave a lot of the same benefits as the Dragon sequence. But still, I like his books so I figured I’d give it a try, and it was interesting. There was this discussion of “Jing Jin”, which are pathways of muscles, tendons, ligaments, and connective tissue that stretch a fair distance across your body (up a specific line of your arm and to a specific area in your chest, for example); seems interesting from a point of view of broader connectedness, though I’m not sure the specific pathways spoke to my experience. There were some isolated exercises which pointed out the importance of not just expanding individual joints but expanding them along a line (e.g. your entire arm) in concert. There was a general explanation of Dao Yin, which made me wonder which stuff I see in my Tai Chi classes could be classified that way: are Silk Reeling Exercises examples? Are some of the Qigong exercises from that class things that Mitchell would classify as Dao Yin? There was a discussion of breathing, which I feel like I should get better at. And it did get me a little curious about the Dragon exercises; maybe I should try out the steps? Probably I should try applying some of the stuff from that book to the Four Animal Frolics…

I tried it out in a few of the Silk Reeling Exercises on Saturday: in particular, stretching my joints more uniformly where that made sense (e.g. in Hand Maneuvers), and even sometimes visualizing expelling bad qi in the few such exercises where that made sense at all. The stretching was an interesting experience, and I actually felt that it helped my breathing; I’m not 100% sure that I’ll try always doing the Silk Reeling that way, but I’m glad I tried it.

Also on Saturday I was noticing that my knee was hurting less than it had been; it was never bad, but there had been occasional twinges, and those are now getting rarer, I think. And I’m also managing to keep my shoulder wells a little more open; having that pointed out in multiple contexts is getting me to pay attention.

Some pointers that came up in the form: when raising your right arm near the end of the first Jing Gang (right before the uppercut), have both of your arms near your center line, so you can imagine trapping your opponent’s arm between them. And, when turning to the right in Push the Mountain, brush your knees with your hands before moving your hands back up to the back of your head.

On Sunday, I was doing lots of punching practice; still doesn’t feel great, but sometimes I felt like I was storing something a little bit in my kua and then circling out of that? I’ll have to see if I can access that feeling in the middle of the form.

Unfortunately, my Wu Ji was going really badly this week. Which I blame on being tired: my sleep has been interrupted more than normal for some reason. And I guess Wu Ji is one of the places where I’m most affected by that?