Today ended a Tai Chi workshop my teacher Lenzie gave, a very rewarding three days of form corrections, posturing, discussion of principles and ideas, and a lot of push-hands. I felt that this workshop was really incredible, to be able to to really go in depth into ideas which we normally don’t have enough time to cover in classes, to visit ideas that don’t come up very often, as well as just a lot of experiences in a short amount of time. Very rich material and altogether very inspiring.
One of the biggest ideas that stuck with me from the workshop was that our daily Tai Chi practice should have elements of:
- Form as a Flow
- Posturing
- Standing Meditation
Now, these ideas are things we go over and go through in all of Lenzie’s classes, but somehow, by stating these three things together, it really stuck in my mind this time. I’m looking forward to incorporating into my daily practice posturing in the mini-form exercise as we practiced with Lenzie in the workshop. I’ve always been on and off with doing posturing in my daily practice, but something about the mini-form and posturing(perhaps the proportion of it?) seems very inviting to do and something that I can do every day.
(I think that posturing somehow never got into my daily practice sheerly out of habit, as when I had studied with Sy, posturing was something we didn’t focus on much, and my daily practice consisted of mainly going through the form and working on individual sections of the form as a flow. Hopefully, with the mini-form exercise, it will be a start to getting posturing incorporated into a regular part of my training.)
One of the other big points that Lenzie made was in regards to Tai Chi as a way of working on our virtues, on working on the higher aspects of ourselves. That was something I think I’ve always thought about but never could so clearly label in my mind what it was that drew me so much to Tai Chi.
Besides the many ideas from workshop, I think one of the most important things I realized was how much I appreciate having such a great teacher and such a great group of people I get to study with. Being able to be around such a wise group of people who really commit to bettering themselves and being positive is truly an amazing thing to experience. I’m really grateful to have that in my life, and appreciate it more and more each day.