Epiphany

My first study with Alex Dong I learned one universally important thing: Not every correction is for me.

Not that I'm not doing it wrong, just that I am incapable of understanding what it is to do it right. Unlike any other study I have subjected myself to, there is no way to impart the knowledge of what is right implicitly. A student has to evolve into understanding of what a specific set of words really means, how a demonstration of the movement or position really feels.

The study of tai chi is filled with metaphors: even the movements and positions themselves have metaphorical names like "grasp bird's tail" or "part wild horse's mane." The applications of these sequences have nothing to do with wild animals, unless that is what you consider your opponent. In class, there are repeated and varied descriptions of what it might feel like, what you might need to be imagining, what real-life experience you can attempt to replicate in order to feel the study properly. Whether it is sinking both feet into the sand, or allowing a leg full of water slowly overflow into the other leg, or that there is a string between your fingertips and knees, these metaphorical concepts eventually give way to understanding.

This is the epiphany.

I remember when I first realized what it felt like to relax my shoulders into my hips and my hips into my feet. I cherish that feeling even today, the ability to really melt between my joints and allow the earth and my body's natural structure to hold me up.

I remember when I held my arm just so, in such a way that my muscles have my brain convinced that my radius and ulna are actually bowed: this is the soft, round arm structure. My elbow has such a connection with the earth and my wrist and fingers are pushing forward and down in such a way that there is no way my arm could be a straight line between those two points: my arm is a bow and the next movement of energy is the arrow. Not that I expect this description to make sense to anyone but myself. It is just another metaphor, because there is no other way to share that feeling with you.

And what Master Alex kept telling me not to try while he challenged the hall full of seasoned practitioners to criticize each other for, this was sinking. No, not just sinking, but sinking lower. I could get closer to the ground; I could bend my knees. But only two years after that class did I experience what can only be described as sinking. I sank. I continue to sink. I do my best not to rise and fall with the waves, remaining immutably sunk.

The study of tai chi is not a study of what movements to make, but how to move. This is a study that moves forward by leaps and bounds interspersed with a struggling crawl. This is my tai chi.