The last unit of time (days? weeks? I lose track) have been heads-down focused effort at work. This tends to shut other considerations out of my brain, as well as reducing me to a limp (yet tense, go figure) assembly of meat at home. Which impairs other projects, like the movie, my TaiChi practice, dance, etc... but so be it.
Right now, I have a bit of a breather, a slight break in the rush. But only for another hour at best -- until my co-worker comes in and I discover he hasn't done the bit of work that he was working on that we need for today.
To help drive my own work effort I've started drinking more coffee. It is magic juice for my brain, improving my concentration and generally helping me stay awake and focused.
But it makes a mess of my muscles. It makes my breathing shallower (through tension, I assume), which makes doing TaiChi properly MUCH harder. The pacing of the form is tied to the breathing (or, perhaps, breathing is tied to your pace), but if I can't breath slowly and deeply, I can't move slowly. And we are now entering a phase of doing the form reallllyyy slooowwwlllyyyy, and exiting the fast-paced saber unit.
So I need to fix that.
Oh, and I suck at staying vertical, too. Yang style is upright. When I work low, I tend to tip over to protect my knees. Gotta keep the center of gravity right or my knees hurt. I don't yet know how to stay vertical, operate low, and not screw up my knees. I think that the lowness and verticality are tradeoffs; I get one but not both. I need to ask Sifu about that.
It's all a bit frustrating. Other than the above issues, though, I'm beginning to feel my grounding, and my hip-tucking is actually beginning to work, too. So I think I'm about to be doing the form at the next level of competence, which is great! So of course, right as I'm moving past my current plateua into a new level of goodness, my limitations become glaringly obvious.
It never ends.
But then, that's the beauty of it. One never perfects the your form, only improves it.
Oh, and this weekend is a really busy shoot for Deadbacks. Busy busy busy, and a bit panicked with over a dozen people to make up with a fresh and mostly inexperienced crew.
Posted by Edwin at May 20, 2005 09:57 AM