The Dragon's Head Blog: Staying Strong in Great Britain – stories of individual practise, part 3

Rather like going to class at a regular time, I have set a schedule for my Tai Chi practice during the ‘shut-down’.  So, at 10.30 every morning I am ready to start. This helps… Otherwise I might decide to stay in bed!

I do practice at home on a regular basis but always a part of the set that I am weak at…. I practice to try and improve that part so that….. what? So that I will feel better about the set? …about my ‘performance‘?

At this time I practice only the Foundations. And something has changed. In my ‘head’ I have always valued the practice of the Foundations… they make sense after all but I have never really ‘enjoyed’ them. It’s always felt like being told as a child, to “eat your bread and butter or you won’t get your cake.”

Now, in the strange, quiet emptiness of my current existence I find that I am treating each Foundation with a new respect and appreciation…. I am taking ‘time’ to consider what is happening in my body…. I’m not ‘counting’ the moves… I just allow them to happen. It feels good and I like that feeling.
I am enjoying the process….

So I ask myself, “what has changed.” And why haven’t I been doing this before. I think that perhaps I always put more value on the Set… forgetting that without the Foundations there is no Set? That the Set is the ‘outward’ show?….that the Foundations are what allows the Set to happen?… They seem more ‘internal’.

Perhaps it is something to do with the current circumstances which have created a time and space for more peaceful reflections… there are no distractions… there is only me, here, with myself with all the permission in the world to take total responsibility for my own practice and to truly focus on what is important in the here and now?

I still practice bits of the set but only to experience the foundation I have been working with.
Because I miss working with others I meet up on line daily with a small group to share a cup of coffee and some of the ‘discoveries’ of our practice. Penny