Back to where I once belonged

I'm getting back to myself in a number of ways. The sun is setting later and that is filling me with all kinds of cheeriness. My back is back in shape and I have been back to both Tai Chi and the clay studio. I started my triumphant return last week and I could already feel the strain on my back from just the first set. I skipped the don-yo's and went lightly on the rest of the exercise. To my great relief, I did not have any setbacks after this and I have been slowly getting back into the 'ol routine. This Wednesday, I was able to get to Tai Chi in time to do the first quiet set as well as the official first set, the various exercises and the final set without pain.

This meant a lot to me, in particular because the 'quiet set' is my favorite. The beginning Tai Chi class is an hour and begins and ends with as much of the set as the class knows at that time. By contrast, the continuing class always knows (for many different values of 'knows')  the full set which takes about 15 minutes. That takes up a half hour, and then there are donyo's and specific lessons in each class. There really isn't any room to fit in another set, so some of the class decided to take it upon themselves to arrive early and do an extra set without commentary or instruction.

It is not that the instruction is irritating. What I have learned in the continuing class has stripped a veil from the practice itself so that I can see where I need to improve. Nothing could be better as there is a definite pleasure that comes from doing the moves correctly. Each time, I 'get' a move, it is like my body is on rails and moving itself. It is like dancing, but instead of a move in response to music, it is the making of music itself.

So why do I love this extra set? Because doing the set is why I wanted to learn Tai Chi in the first place. It takes up a lot of time in my day, but I am determined to get these moves in my bones so that I can do them any time I want. Right now, I still need the rest of the class around me to remind me of the moves.

This is getting long, so the next post will be on pottery, and possibly poetry.

The Pain of Continuing

After Beginning Tai Chi there is, of course, Continuing Tai Chi. The main difference is that there are a series of exercises - donyos, toy-yos (sp?), etc, which are done in between sets. At first, they seemed unrelated to the Tai Chi set, but it did not take long to understand how they literally deepen the movements. It seems however, that the donyos may be at least partially to blame for taking me out of the action for a few weeks. I call the donyos "glorified squats" which is a bit harsh, but a good way of describing the essential movement. Our continuing class does 4 sets of 27 (for a total of 108 - the number of Tai Chi movements). That is a lot of effort in the legs and I am afraid that I may have forgotten the "lift with the legs, not with the back" mantra somewhere along the line. Then again, I have also been going to a chiropractor for a while to deal with some underlying back issues.

In any case, my spine got out of whack and I pulled a muscle the morning before I was due for a chiropractor session. The muscle stayed pulled and was in a state of constant spasm. I got some drugs from my mainstream doc (who is not really that mainstream, but that is another story), and then a second prescription when the first prescription proved to be ineffective.

I am on the road to recovery now and it is a boring road with a long list of things I shouldn't be doing and a near endless (i.e. over two weeks long) cycle of advances and setbacks. In the meantime, it snowed and I spent a day gazing helplessly at the snow while my husband and daughter played and then a second day in a medication free, pain free state of ecstasy at the sight of the blazing white snow and the deep blue sky.

There is no predicting how life will end out, but I try to remember the deep blue days.