Yesterday, I talked about Taiji and Bagua. Well, more Taiji than Bagua. Taiji weapons, which I love. Passionately. It took my teacher literally placing a wooden sword in my hand to get me to try it out, but I could not be stopped after that. I love my Taiji weapons, and after I got home from the hospital, my biggest concern (after my cat, of course), was, “Can I do my weapons forms once again?”
Two days after I returned home from the hospital, I tried to do the Sword Form with a wooden sword. Normally, I use my steel one, but I wanted to try with as light as possible a weapon. Was it a smart decision? Hell, no! Was it completely predictable? Hell, yes! I made it through the third posture and then felt completely exhausted so I stopped.
By the third or fourth month I was home, though, I was back to my full routine. I taught myself the Fan Form post-hospital, and next up with be the Guandao Form. I’m doing other things in the meantime because I don’t want to just collect weapons.
Here is where Bagua steps in. I have liked it since my teacher suggested walking the circle in place of meditation. This was at the beginning of my studies with her, and I was having flashbacks during meditatiion. By the way, I have researched it and found out that for some people with trauma, meditation only exacerbated it. That made me feel better because all I heard was about how great meditation was for everyone. I know that is the tendency of human nature–to think that if something is beneficial to them, then it would be for everyone else.
I had the same issue with yoga. My mother practiced it and loved it. I tried it twice. I hated it both times. The second time, it was at a party. The person throwing the party had invited a friend of hers who was a yoga instructor to do a free session. There was many things wrong with it, but the biggest was that she declared she was very sensitive about whether people wanted to be touched or not.
Side note: people who declare things about themselves are rarely correct. Especially when it’s somtehnig that is seen as a given. “I’m a nice guy” is the quintessential meme about it. If you’re a nice person, it will be seen by others; you don’t actually have to say it. In addition, being nice is baseline and not something worthy of saying out loud.
I took Taiji from someone else before my current teacher. That first person was a narcissistic, predatory asshole. He also made a big deal about how he was able to read people and knew when they did not want to be touched. He was full of shit. He touched me to adjust me more than once, and the reason I finally left (after a year of hating studyng with him) was because he we were talking when he casually reached over and flicked my hair behind my shoulder. It freaked me the fuck out and was so intimate, I knew I had to get out of there.