I’ve been frustrated the last few days because I’m not making progress. Intellectually, I know that I can’t be making progress all the time (because there is a a ceiling to my abilities; I’m not superhuman), but I hate feeling as if I’m in a holding pattern. On my morning constitutional, I go a little farther each day. Yesterday, however, I was feeling a bit peaky and went as far as I had the day before. Maybe a tiny bit farther, but not much. And I have maxed out many of the warmups–I don’t want to do more just for the sake of doing more. Part of Taiji is not doing more than is strictly necessary, which is my guiding principle. Hey, I know my strengths and being lazy is one of them. I am a champion lazy person!
Still. Deep within my lazy soul, there is a burning kernel of perfectionist that flares up every now and again. When that happens, it’s as if I flipped a switch from lazy to Energizer bunny who goes, goes, goes until his batteries run out.
I know it’s part of being a perfectionist, really. If something isn’t what I deem perfect, then it’s pure shit and I want nothing to do with it. Taiji has helped tempered that impulse, but it hasn’t completely eradicated my perfectionism. See, Taiji is not a miracle cure even though it can seem as if it is now and again. I’ve had a hell of a time trying to explain it to my parents, especially my father, who seems to think that he should be able to do a Taiji exercise or two a few times and be cured of all his aches and pains. I try to explain to him it doesn’t work that way, but to no avail. Taiji is great and I credit it with many things, including being the main reason I came back from my ordeal with such minimal damage. But that’s because I have practiced it for fourteen years (or so). When I explained a back warmup to my father (the one that stopped my excruciating back pain after a year of doing it every day), he said that he didn’t have a year to do it. I said he could do it when he went back to Taiwan as well. It took two or three months to see a noticeable difference and a year for the pain to completely disappear.
Side note: Now that I’m sleeping in my bed again (I used to sleep on the couch), I’m getting back pain again. I do the exercise twice a day and it goes away, but it comes back after sleeping on my side in my bed. I didn’t have this issue when I slept on the couch, but that is neither here nor there.