I went to The Studio this morning to teach and practice with the 8-9:30am T'ai Chi Ch'uan and Qigong class.
I had 7 students participating this morning. Thanks for coming gang!!
I started out talking about balancing and counterbalancing and stretching or opening, then getting movement through release as opposed to contraction (that's a big idea, challenging to accomplish)
We went through The 10+ Exercises and then a Round (right side). I paused momentarily throughout Part I at the end of each posture. The idea being continuous movement throughout the transition but concluding (stopping without actually stopping) the posture on the outside but feeling the momentum on the inside and catching it to start the next posture. From the outside it should appear to be continuous movement but on the inside you are momentarily in Wuji (stillness) at the conclusion of the posture and catching the internal feeling of momentum and using that to start the next posture.
I was having quite a bit of difficulty with my concentration this morning. Focusing on the Principles and feeling, I lost the sequence to the form ....Twice!! Very unusual for me; I found it slightly embarrassing but mostly a little amusing;^) I guess that's what night after night of poor sleep looks like....Thanks to Echo out new dog that insists on sleeping in the bed with us. Oy Vey!!
I find that if I sufficiently change how I think about a form I will eventually loose the sequence no matter how well I actually know the sequence. That part of my brain does not know it!
I also talked about Hun/Haah and the 'energy' (Chi) coming from your center and then expanding out to your extremities and then back to you center again. Over and over again. It's the basis of most internal work.
After class I did a Tai-Chi 13 Spear session, reviewing the 5 sets that I'm currently working on. Then I went to YMCA for Cybex session and then down to Hatfield to see my friends Paul and Jean. It was really good to see Paul (Jean too).