Book #30

About four years ago Cha and I began taking Tai Chi classes in a church at 2640 St. Paul Street. We completed the 2-year program to learn the entire form, but stopped before the advanced course, which teaches push hands and Chi awareness. We're just too busy for weekly indulgences of this sort!

So I still do Tai Chi, but I'm stalled and simply going through the motions (literally). This little book flabbergasted me, instead of helping deepen my practice. Like many texts of its time and geographic origin, it is full of confounding conundrums: "Be still like a mountain; move like a mighty river." "If the waist does not command, the roots will be weak." "He who farts in church must sit in his own pew."

I have to be more supple, particularly in the legs and shoulders. My waist does not control the movements, my head does. The problem is not a lack of focus; the problem is that I'm focusing at all. Onward.