I’ve talked in the past about how much I love the weapon forms in Taiji (and now, Bagua). I am grateful for the health benefits, but they are not the focus for me.
Side note: We’re supposed to get between twelve and eighteen inches of snow over the weekend. I am so excited, even if we only get half that amount. Prince has a song about snow in April (I will include the video below), and he’s right. We’re not even quite mid-March, and it’s still rare to get that much snow at this time. I mean, it’s rare in general, so I’m very excited. I don’t think we’ll get even 12 inches because predictions are wildly inflated, but if we get half that, I will be satisfied.
I’ve gotten my groceries and I ordered Indian today, so I’m set for at least the weekend. I’m very fortunate that I have DoorDash and InstaCart, but I don’t want to make them drive in the snow. That’s why I used both today rather than wait for the weekend proper. I don’t want to get stuck, and I don’t want anyone else to get stuck, either.
Anyway, I made it clear to my teacher from the very start that while I was happy that there were health benefits, that wasn’t my focus. Oh, I was so young and naive then. I mean, it’s not bad that I preferred the weapons to the hands-only Taiji, but I brushed it off like it was no big thing.
I mean, I was grateful that it helped with my back problems, but that was it for the health benefits. I didn’t think much past that.
I did appreciate that it helped with my mental health and helped me to set healthier (not healthy, but healthier) boundaries. And, now, it helps me to shore up my faltering mental health when I have to deal with difficult situations. I am much more prepared to handle it than I was twenty years ago, though still at a heavy cost.
For me, it’s all about the weapons. I am making myself learn the left side of the Solo Long Form beacuse it’s way past the time when I should have done it. Right after learning the right side of the from my teacher–and it’s the first form you learn, by the way–I should have taught myself the left form.
That’s how it works in general. My teacher teaches me the right side of a form, and then I teach myself the left*. As I was teaching myself the left side of the Solo Long Form, my teacher’s teacher was in his experimental phase. That meant that the form was constantly changing. I was in the third part of the third section (the very last sub-section) when this started happening, and I just could not do it.