And we’re back. Let’s talk current family situation and what I want to do about it. In the last post, I talked about the history of my family dysfunction. That was not the point of my post, but it’s what was apparently on my mind. My father has dementia. He’s had it for roughly twenty… Continue Reading
We are back with another post about my goals for the new year. In my last post, I was talking about Taiji and how much it’s helped me in my life. It’s not hyperbole to say that it’s saved my life, both during the medical crisis (literally) and before it (emotionally). My family dysfunction runs… 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
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
I had a private lesson today. Bagua, not Taiji. There is so much I want to leran; it’s hard to focus on just one thing. There are All. The. Weapons. But, for now, I have been captivated by the Swimming Dragon Form (Bagua), and I have asked my teacher to teach me. Before we got… 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
After a few posts in which I went down several side paths, I finally began to talk about Bagua in the last post I wrote. I don’t know much about the history, but what I do know is that the founder, Dong Haichuan/Hai Chuan, used DeerHorn Knives (real ones, not steel ones) in his own… Continue Reading
Ok. I’m going to talk about Bagua for real this time. Not ilke for fake as I did in the last post. And the one before that. but I swear that this time, I am actually going to talk about Bagua. Eventually. To recap, I did some Bagua a few years after starting Taiji. It… Continue Reading
Yesterday, I was going to write about Bagua and then went completely off the rails. Well, not completely. It was tangential to what I was talking about, but it did relate. I was writing about my mother’s ability to gaslight me about past events, but with utter sincerity on her part. Because of this, I… Continue Reading