This is post seven of my weekly musings on Taiji and how it’s helped me with life. Yes, that’s it. That’s all I’m doing. Just kidding. In the last post, I was talking about life in general and how messed up I was before I started studying Taiji. I mean, more messed up than I… Continue Reading
I’m continuing to muse about Taiji and me for the sixth post. In the last post, I talked about how I learned to trust my Taiji teacher over time beacuse she was consistent, transparent, and steady in her response to my barrage of questions. It’s one of her best qualities in my eyes. I could… Continue Reading
This is part five about my discourse on Taiji (and how it’s been a boon for me). In the last post, I talked about….well, lots of stuff. I wanted to talk about trust and my teacher, but then wandered into my past and why my family dysfunction made me unlikely to trust. It turns out… Continue Reading
This is part four of my weeklong treatise on the unexpected benefits of Taiji and other things related. In the last post, I meandered here and there, but was ostensibly talking about my teacher and how I grew to trust her. Because it’s me, I had to give background as to why I have a… Continue Reading
I have written two posts about the unexpected long-term (and slow-to-realize) benefits of Taiji. I was going to write a third (this post), and while that is still the nominal plan, I want to focus moe on my teacher in this post. Or rather, how I got to the point where I trust her implicitly… Continue Reading
Yesterday, I wrote part one of the unexpected long-term benefits of Taiji with a fair bit of meandering in between actual points. That’s how my brain works, and it’s not something I care to change. Things are connected, man. That’s just the way it is. I mentioned that I fell the other day. This is… Continue Reading
When people talk about the benefits of Taiji, often they mean the health benefits–both physical and mental. Sometimes, there’s the added talk of how it helps shift your mindest becaause the basic tenet of Taiji is that you take is what is given to you and return it. It’s also known as the lazy person’s… Continue Reading
I am AFAB and a part of two different cultures that put a heavy emphasis on performing femininity. That would be American and Taiwanese. It’s insidious in both cultures, though in differing ways. Taiwanese culture, at least through my parents, is regressive, stifling, and has rigid gender expectations. Every time I’ve been there, I have… Continue Reading
When I talk about Taiji, it’s really difficult to convey the feeling of flow that I get in when a weapon form is going well. I have said that holding a sword was like having an extension of my hand, but that’s a very clumsy way of phrasing it. And trite. I can talk about… Continue Reading
Most of the time, I prefer to follow a schedul and am rather rigid in my way of thinking. This is fine until the routine becomes a rut. I love Taiji, but I will admit that for the last six months or so, I was less-than-enthused about it. I’m weird in that while I vastly… Continue Reading