I’m very happy to have you following along and to have you sharing your experiences. What I write about here anyone can experience. Sometimes I find it helpful to “pretend” I can do something and a realization comes to me that makes it real. Other times I just ask myself “If I were able to do this, how would I do it?” Then later on the answer comes to me during practice or someone shows up to answer the question. What I find really interesting is sometimes that someone who shows up is a student or someone in a class I’m attending. More often than not it’s my teacher or our master who give me the answer, at times whether I ask for it or not.

Good luck,
John

Just beginning with ‘going beyond’ the movements of my Tai Chi (started just 3 years ago) and found it very interesting to read your posts and experiences. Some day I hope to be able to get to a point that I can experience what you write about.

By the way, I like ripples!

John

You know, I had no particular reaction to this post — or, not enough to leave a comment, anyway — but when I did my practice this morning, your delineation (above) of structure-and-energy helped me feel these things more clearly. So I think there’s no question that, by making clear distinctions, our experience and awareness can be heightened.

You might be surprised to know how many “ripples” your posts send out!

Rationalizing chi is not very effective is it? The experience you describe of being “heavy yet light as a feather, and toasty warm all weekend” is very interesting. I think your experience will help others if they can just look for the feeling without trying to figure out how it happens. My Master tells us, “If you try to make chi flow, you block it.” We just have to let go and, like you described it, it will happen on its own. Later we learn to control it.

John

I am with you man, my tai chi training so far is still very early stages, and in the past I have always tried to rationalize chi, that it’s a concept that embodies hot, cold, good bad, blood flow, nervous system regulation, kinetic energy… etc etc and it is all those things and many more…. but there is something else that I can’t articulate yet, something that one week made me feel heavy yet light as a feather, and toasty warm all weekend.

I need to keep at it, it’s constant revelations for me every day, totally stimulating.

Cheers,

Sheld’s last blog post..Enjoyment