New, Different, and Interesting

 Last Wednesday I went to my first Tai Chi class! I had done a tiny bit of Tai Chi back at the beginning of the lockdown when the virtual classes were available but other than that I had never touched it. I had a couple of thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head so I figured I'd write a quick blog to document them.

1) Sifu Dennis was demonstrating a handful of techniques and I was doing my best to follow along and mirror her movements. As I was shadowing her I realized that I have never applied my eye for detail like this before. Sometimes we hear phrases like "think about how your instructor is moving, do you feel the way they look?" Having the opportunity to do the techniques simultaneously was very interesting because normally I am running through a checklist of what my own body is doing, where are my hips pointing, how are my feet aligned, where is the starting point for my wrist rotations? But since I was so focused on watching I didn't even feel like I was in my body. Or? That's not quite right? Maybe it's closer to say I was viewing myself from a purely internal perspective? When I described those question I normally ask myself, I am looking at it from an outside perspective as if I'm trying to watch myself from the outside, using the mirrors, looking down at my stances, and when I was trying to copy the tai chi form I couldn't see myself at all (whether that's because I was using all my energy to focus on seeing Sifu Dennis, or because tai chi is very internal I'm not sure, but like I said it was very interesting!)

2) I also realized that since the movements I was following were happening so slowly I found I was using my eye for detail in a more unfamiliar way. Usually when I am watching a technique in kung fu everything happens fairly fast so I try to see things like the overarching flow of energy across the whole technique. When seeing something brand new for the first few times I'm not looking for those finer points of detail but instead watching for the larger expansions and contractions, seeing how the body is moving as a whole rather than a culmination of all the smaller parts working in harmony. But in the tai chi class the slower movement combined with the fact that I had no idea what would be coming next in the sequence meant that it was very difficult for me to see that overarching impression of energy so I did find my eyes darting around trying to find those finer points of detail in the hopes that the big picture would become clearer to me and again, very different, very interesting! I don't know if I've every applied my eye for detail in that way before. 

3) I realized I learn forms the same way I drive. Some context: I have a horrible sense of direction and it takes very little for me to get completely turned around. Any time I'm driving somewhere new it takes all of my focus to listen to the directions coming from the GPS which means that when I get there I have almost no memory of how I got there. Can you see the forms analogy yet? I will focus 100% on each movement, using all my brain juice to replicate the technique to the best of my ability, but then have almost no memory of what the technique even was, or what order they go in. Just like driving, I will start to pick up on the sequence of things on the second run through, but on that first go I'm just taking things as they come. As I'm writing this I'm not sure if this is something I can/should work towards changing regarding my approach to learning forms (I've given up on fixing my sense of direction long ago) but at the very least I am actually aware that it's happening now.