Taiji is my life. This is something people need to know about me. It’s not my life in the same way it is for my teacher, but it’s an integral part of my daily life. I get up, put the coffee on, feed Shadow, and then do my daily Taiji routine. I still marvel at how I dragged my feet to practice at home, which was what drove me to take a second class a week. And then a third.
My brain is weird. I simply can’t make it do certain things. Practicing at home was one of those things. I had to basically trick my brain. I told it we would just be doing five minutes of stretches. That was acceptable to my brain. Then I added the first section of the Solo Form. This had to be before I did the weapons because I wanted to do those all the time.
Now, I’m up to an hour and fifteen minutes a day. Well, I can squish it to an hour if I rush through certain bits. But I try to do it as leisurely as possible. This is one of my flaws, though. I race throgh the Solo Form. It’s still my least favorite, though I do not hate it like I once did. Which is good because it’s the base for everything else we do. Everything else builds on it, so it’s best to at least appreciate that.
I railed against every movement in the Solo (Long) Form. Well, not every. But there were plenty that drove me nuts. One was called Fist Under Elbow, which apparently I called the W. (George) of postures. (They were postures when I learned them. They are movements now.)
It’s funny because there are movements that are so elaborate. Those are the ones that I have the best grasp of now that I’m teaching myself the left side. It’s because I had to put so much effort into learning the right side, I can more easily recall it on the left. Its the ‘easy’ movements that are giving me trouble beacuse I don’t think about it when I do them on the right side.
It’s the same with the weapon forms. When I was teaching myself the left side of the Sword Form, I was breezing through it. There was only one posture that was stymying me–and it was the easiest posture in the entire form. It’s called the Fishing Posture and it’s simply dropping the tip of the sword in an arc from high to low. (It’s a bit more refined than that, but that’s the basic gist). It’s a two-count posture and just about the most natural of the postures. It took me a half hour to teach myself the left side of that one posture. The rest was easy-peasy.
One reason I love the Sword Form so much is because it just felt natural to me. I’ve told this story before, but when my teacher first suggested I learn the Sword Form, I reacted very negatively. I abhorred the thought of violence (I only wanted to learn Taiji for self-defense). She tried to convince me to try it, saying it was the next step in Taiji. I refused, and I can be very stubborn when I wanted to be. Even when I didn’t want to be, there was something in my brain that told me to not do it.
It culminated in a moment when she pressed a wooden practice sword in my hand. “Just hold it,” she said as she would not allow me to pull away. I reluctantly closed my hand around the hilt and the minute my fingers closed, I fell in love with the sword. I felt a jolt in my arm and then it was as if I had always been hold ing a sword. It was an extension of my hand, and I never wanted to not be holding it.
When I fall in love with something, I go all in. It’s the hyperfocused aspect of my personality. I went to the Taiji demo my teacher’s school was having, and there was someone there selling swords. I looked at them greedily, then picked up one that caugt my eye. I held it out to the vendor, and he said I had chosen the best one. Was he pulling my leg? I don’t think so. My teacher knew him from his store and vouched for him. It was more than I expected to pay, but I justified it by saying I would use it for the rest of my life. Which, to be fair, has been correct so far. It was $150 w hen I bought it. I’ve been using it roughly ten years. So that’s ten bucks a year. I’ll take it.
I bugged my teacher to show me the Sword Form as quickly as possible. I could not get enough, and once she taught it to me, I taught myself the left side. I did it with ease. In fact, as I said above, the hardest posture to teach myself on the left side was the easiest posture in the form.
After the Sword Form, I asked my teacher what was next. She said it was the Saber Form. I was eager to start, figuring it would be like the Sword Form, but with broader (heh. It’s also called a broadsword) strokes. Boy, was I wrong. Everything about it felt different–and wrong. The saber was uncomfortable in my hand, and I hated the way it moved.
I hated it in general. I struggled to learn it, and it felt alien to me. We reached the end of the fourth row (out of six), and I got in a minor car accident. I only had a massive bruise on my stomach and nothing else, but I was rattled. Plus, I just wasn’t feeling the Saber Form. Months turned into years, then we finally returned to the saber.
The second time around, it was much more intuitive. I had realized that I was thinknig of it in the completely wrong way. It was not just a different kind of Sword Form–it was its own form completely. With that knowledge in mind, it made it easier for me to learn the Saber Form. And in time, I learned to deeply appreciate it. I don’t love it the way I do the Sword Form, but I do have much affection for it.