When I picked tai chi as my hand form this year I did it with two thoughts in mind: it would be a more low impact way to bring my body back into the swing of things AND it's a requirement already for third degree so it made sense. Tai chi broadsword also is low impact and pairs nicely with the tai chi hand form.
I've been finding it difficult though to do my hand form reps. Throughout the day I put it off thinking "I don't have 15 minutes uninterrupted to do a form rep" so I leave it until the very end of the day when everyone else is in bed and I have an uninterrupted block of time.
Today I approached things differently. I started to count off reps of each form section (there are 4) instead of reps of the entire form. I know it doesn't sound like a big difference, but it made things seem more achievable. I can fit in 5 minutes here to do part 1 a couple of times, and I can do part 2 once while Julia's distracted for 2 minutes, etc. So tonight I actually didn't have a big 45 minute block of tai chi waiting for me.
It was nice.
Doing it in smaller pieces also let me focus on the details a little more as well. When I do it all together in the back of my mind I'm always saying "hurry up so you can move on to the next thing....".
It seems to me that I've heard this advice from Sifu Brinker before (the whole doing things in small bits often thing), but I never thought of applying it to tai chi before. I think this will help.
Today I consumed: 1 piece of peanut butter and honey toast, some goldfish crackers, some biscuit casserole, some chinese food, a cup of earl grey tea, 2 cups of coffee, 4 glasses of water and a beer
1 comment:
That's a good idea to break down the Tai Chi form. You may find that it is a treat when you have time to do the whole thing, That is what if feels like to me. :)
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