Tai chi and me -- sixteen years on

I've never been a jogger. I'm not much of an athlete, period. And since Shadow-dog died almost a year ago, I don't walk as much as I used to. 

But I'm still doing tai chi sixteen years after I started, and am very grateful for the practice. It's been helpful with balance through years of vertigo, kept up my core strength for gardening tasks, challenged my brain to remember the sequences in order, and helped me through frozen shoulder and recovery from a broken foot. It's gentle and graceful, but still enough that I work up a sweat every morning. There's almost enough room in my living room to do a complete set of 108 moves, but what I really love is doing it outdoors.

Over the last few years, I've discovered that I can almost do it without thinking because it's part of muscle memory. So I've combined it with a morning prayer mantra... which sometimes distracts me enough that I lose my place and have to back up because I forgot to turn and chop with fist, or missed stepping up and raising hands at the right time. But that's okay -- extra exercise is never a bad thing!

I've tried yoga and other kinds of exercise, but this is still my favourite because it's something I can do alone or with a group, anywhere and any time. And after 16 years, I'm still doing it right, or so I discovered when I came across the video below. That's a pretty wonderful thing to know!

Here's a fellow named Kevin moving fairly slowly through the 108 moves. I love to watch him go through the motions now and then because his video reminds me of nuances that I sometimes forget. If you're a tai chi practitioner, you'll know what I mean. Enjoy!

Simple Suggestion #285 -- Dance!

My dearest friend and a dozen or so of her friends from across Western Canada have welcomed me into their Saturday morning 5Rhythms group. Early every Saturday morning, via an online video call platform, we get together to move to music. My friend comes up with a 20-25 minute playlist of 5 songs of different types -- Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness, and we enjoy embodying the songs by moving to them in different ways. The rhythms themselves form a wave that peaks with high activity in the middle (chaos) and comes back to stillness, a quiet and contemplative state. We conclude with silent meditation for ten minutes. Moving and meditating with the ladies never fails to touch me deeply.

The dancing part of our time together reminds me of when I was small, and my mom would play music in our living room. We had a really colourful rug, and I remember pretending it was magical, and that it gave me the power to be a great interpretive dancer, graceful and strong, and I would perform for adoring crowds in my mind, often with my sisters. For some reason, the songs that come to mind are Puppet on a String (chaos?) by Paul Mauriat and his orchestra (see below), followed by their version of Love is Blue (lyrical?). I suspect we asked Mom to play that record over and over and one song just followed the other.

The meditative part of our 5Rhythms time together is powerful too... just having a sense that we are all joined together in silence -- opening ourselves to quiet and peace -- somehow bonds us together even though many of us are strangers to each other.

As a practitioner of centering prayer most days, I have regular opportunities for quiet and peace -- it's the dance that I find I really need. In moving to music, I hear it in a different way because it is embellished with my own physicality. Dancing enriches the music experience, even though I'm not trained as a dancer and often feel a bit awkward in my movement. If a song has lyrics, those words find a deeper meaning somehow. If it is instrumental, the beauty of a certain instrument or the piece as a whole may resonate more deeply within me. Movement becomes a different form of active meditation as my body and mind work together to create a physical representation of something almost intangible. And that physical representation fills me with endorphins and probably other healthy neurological things I don't know about that combat stress and anxiety and are good for me, body and soul.

So the next time a piece of music catches your attention and you're able to move, why not dance? And invite those around you to dance with you! Life is too short to worry about how awkward we look or who might be laughing... and in my experience, often those who laugh wish they could lose their inhibitions long enough to join in.

If you find you're taking life too seriously, dance is one way to lighten things up! Here's the light-hearted Puppet on a String. If you don't want to get up and dance right now, just let your hands be the puppeteer... and have a happy day!