I’ve been writing posts about my medical crisis, my re-birthday, and my goals for the upcoming year. I have written one goal per post (as is my wont to talk endlessly about the smallest minutiae), and we’ll see if I continue that in this post. Yesterday, I talked about learning new weapons forms in Taiji because I haven’t in some time.
Today, I want to talk about my mental health (Taiji and Bagua would fit here as well). It has been on a slow, but steady decline since the second anniversary of my re-birth. In the last post, I outlined some of the reasons why, but I want to dive more deeply into that.
One of the biggest issues is that while I had a life-changing event, that didn’t stop life from happening. It also didn’t completely change me. I mean, there was a change to my core. How could there not be when I died twice? That leaves a stamp on your soul that you can’t erase. At least, I cannot. Nor would I want to erase it. I have said that while it was traumatic (of course), it was also the best thing to happen to me.
Side note: This is one of the books I’ve toyed with writing. A joke self-help book in which the only advice is to try dying and coming back again. I just don’t know if I have enough to make it last for a whole book. I can carry a joke far, but how far?
Back to my mental health. My depression is probably back up to 60% of what it used to be.
Interjection: I have struggled with chronic and deep depression since I was seven. It lifted by roughhly 90% when I died. Twice. And came back twice. Then it steadily went up again. (My anxiety dropped to 40% and is now back up to 60% or so.) Here’s the thing, though. As I mentioned in a recent post, I had a shitty run of several months in which there was a steady drip of negative things happening to me–ranging from trivial and irritating to devastating and heartbreaking.
Which brings me back to my mental health.
Taiji (and now Bagua) has kept my mental health issues under control for fifteen years. Taiji has saved my life, even if it’s metaphorical. I mean, it literally saved my life during my medical crisis, but it metaphorically did it for years before that.
When I first started Taiji, I did it resentfully. With my current teacher, I mean. I had had an experience with another teacher who was horrible. A cult leader more like it who took advantage of his students. I don’t want to talk about it because it still pisses me off. Not only was he a skeevy perv, but he was a terrible teacher, too. I was in his beginner’s class for a year and did not even learn half the solo form. He claimed it was because he had to make sure that beginners were taken care of, but what about the rest of us?
I quit, disillusioned and grossed out. I didn’t look agaain for several years, but when I did, I had several qualifications that needed to be met.
1. The teacher had to be a woman. That was nonnegotiable. I was sick and tired of ciswhite men (which is all it was in Minnesota) who thought their shit didn’t stink and were sleazy cult leaders. More to the point, I wanted someone who understood that the male body was not the default and could actually answer questions like, “What should I do about my boobs if I need my arm flat against my chest?” without the teacher blushing like a twelve-year-old schoolgirl and making a snarky/dismissive comment about not knowing because they didn’t haev boobs.
Nowadays, I would include nonbinary, agender, and genderqueer, of course. And, yes, this is discriminatory. I am more than fine with that. Why? Because it’s more about what I’m comfortable with than excluding a group. It’s also because, quite frankly, I was done with cishet white dudes at that point.
2. No merch. So many of the studios wanted you to buy their shit. Gis, belts, etc.–which aren’t even a Taiji thing. I had no interest in something that regimented and strict. Nor that it was so obviously a cash grab.
3. Had to be within 20 minutes. of me. That’s not a big ask as almost everything is within 20 minutes of me.
Those were the three things that I wanted for sure. When I went to my teacher’s class for the first time, it was just me and a friend. My teacher had just started her solo practice and was floundering. We talked way too much in the beginning, losing my friend along the way. We are still chatty in my private lessons, but we try to keep it down to a dull roar.
It’s one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life. I fought against it for the first two or three years, but it slowly became an integral part of my life. I practice every morning (or when I get up) for an hour-and-a-half or so, mostly Taiji, with a little Bagua thrown in. I’m 53, and I’m in better shape than I have been for my whole life.
In the RKG Discord, people in their thirties complain about being old and their bodies breaking down. I usually don’t comment, but I have so much less body aches now than I did before I started Taiji.
It’s something I bring up from time to time, but it’s a hard sell. There is no immediate benefit that can be seen (but might be felt). You’re not going to get swole or get rid of your aches and pains. But I can tell you that it is great for your health (physical and mental) in the long run.
A year or two into my practice, I was having excruciating back pain. And knee pain. I asked my teacher if there was anything I could do about it. She looked at my form and told me that Iwas collapsing my knees.
I’m done because I’m tired.