I’ve had a fairly productive month in Taiji, but I’ve also had a bit of a rough one. My knees started becoming inflamed again, so I had to take it easy a couple of days.
There has been less emphasis on form work and more emphasis on push hands. We’ve also gotten into some of the theory beyond just application.
Have you ever paid attention to a function of your self or something around you that occurs without thinking or much effort? I did this recently with walking in the context of what I’ve been learning in Taiji.
In Taiji, stepping and walking isn’t allowed to be incidental. Each step is with purpose and with effort to do it right. Taiji walking should result in a great amount of balance while movement so that the walker can deal with an incoming force. It’s basically walking with intention.
I took a look at my regular walking, pay attention to how the body moves, and it really is a series of controlled falls and catches. One way to really demonstrate this is to step down a step, such as off of a curb or a set of stairs. The problem with this, though, is balance is barely achieved and there is no concept of a root. If you were to be surprise attacked with a push while walking, you could easily be pushed down.
Intent walking, though, particularly with Taiji walking, changes the rules a bit. The reason is with each step, balance is acquired before the next step is taken. Being pushed, it’s easy to regain or maintain balance.
Military style marching (including activities in marching band, etc) is another form of walking with intention, though it serves a bit of a different purpose. Still, it has an emphasis on balance by reducing the falling aspect.
I’ve been trying to blend Taiji walking into regular walking to see if I can make it look normal. I’m curious if it can reduce some of my stumbling (yeah, I can stumble over nothing at all).
Man, it’s been almost two months since my last taiji post. Well, I’ve returned to class after a lengthy recovery of my knees and things seem to be going well. Unfortunately, during my break from taiji, I had to break from leg workouts altogether as they were aggravating the injury. This means my legs have fallen out of shape due to lack of heavy duty work. However, I’m recovering quickly.
If you haven’t noticed, I haven’t posted much on Taiji lately. I have had a few classes since my last post, but I’ve run into a problem. It appears the introduction of a stepping drill, which I was most likely performing incorrectly, has caused re-injury of my knees. I tried going back into class after the pain started, but it was only getting worse. I have been out of class for about two weeks now.
I attempted getting back into my leg workouts in an attempt to use what I learned from physical therapy, but I went a little too far. I don’t think I made it worse, but it definitely indicated to me that the problem was still there. For the time being, I’m on light duty therapy until I feel I can get back into full training again.
I’ll most likely return to my Taiji class in the next couple of weeks, but I will be avoiding the harder workouts and drills (basically anything I’ve learned in the past few months).
I missed posting the past few weeks, partly out of laziness, partly out of preoccupation, and partly out of not having much to post. So instead of a “This Week” post, I will review the year. I started learning Taiji this year, as well as started many other things related to my health, in general. I haven’t yet completed a full year of learning Taiji, but I have invested quite a bit of time.
