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 prefer a schedule for the most part, I will get bored of it at a certain point in time. I was telling my teacher that if I’m not careful, I start doing things by rote.
She said that was easy to do if you don’t practice without intention. Let’s face it. Doing something over and over can make it easy to slip into it being a habit. Taiji is about being present in the moment and not anticiptaing what was coming up.
My beloved weapons were the exception, but even with that, I aws lagging a bit. I have put learning vew weapnos on hold, which is probably part of thereason that I’m feeling stale. But,I need to refine my current forms and not rush onto another one.
Then I saw my teacher doing the Swimming Dragon Form (Bagua), and I needed that in my life. This is how I learn new weapons sometimes. I see it; I want it; I do it. I’m excited once again, and it’s because I’m learning something new. I have added several Bagua drills to my routine, and that has freshened things up quite a bit.
My usual practice goes like this. I start with the stretches and the warmups as I’m feeding Shadow. He has become incredibly picky as he’s gotten older, and he eats v-e-r-y slowly now. It can take up to forty-five minutes for him to eat one meal. And I have to switch his food two to three times per meal. He’s old. I think his nose is failing. His appetite isn’t, though. He eats more than he used to, but he still has old cat body.
Anyawy, while he is eating, I do my stretches and warmups. I o a sectoion from the Solo (Long) Form. on Saturdays, it’s the first section of the Fast Form. Which is my favorite. I only know the first section, but I cannot wait to learn more.
Side note: I no longer remember what my side note was gonig to be. I would say, though, that one thing that frustrates me about the solo forms is that my teacher’s teacher is constantly fiddilng with them. Maybe not now, buct there was a time when it seemed like he was changing things every other week. My teacher said that with the old masters, they did the same. They never stopped tweaking and they just expected their students to roll with it.