Day 228 - Tai Chi Yang Style

that's a big beachball

I took a sort of duvet day from work today...I'm owed over 30 hours so I felt it was reasonable to take a day for myself.  

I spent the day at home, tidying up and finishing off those videos (see Day 228b), dozing with a cat on my lap, and practising a little Tai Chi Yang style.

Really, I have no idea what I'm doing...I learnt a little from an Xbox fitness game that uses the Kinect to tell you when you're doing it correctly, and some of it has stayed with me.  I find it really helps with balance and control.

Since mentioning it in a blog post the other day, it's been on my mind again, and I thought I might try to take it up a little more seriously.

I enjoy the peaceful, meditative aspect of it, as well as the balance and control.  It's supposed to be very good for your health, and it's surprisingly tiring, despite the apparent lack of activity. 

Also, it looks really cool...when done properly!

reasonable form

And I'm really not suggesting that I'm doing it at all properly - I'm an absolute beginner with no real experience.

So I found an instructional video on Youtube, and spent half an hour learning the first few moves.  They're really hard to remember, as well as being hard to do (or hard to do well, at least)!   

It seems that it's important to be in full control and awareness of all four limbs, your core, your centre of gravity, and the orientation of various body parts (knees, feet, hands, elbows, head, torso)...then add constant planes of motion and the interactions between all of the above, and it becomes quite the multitasking challenge!

Consequently, I think there's a fairly steep learning curve.

go away

I took a short video of myself so that I could check my form, and sure enough I can see a whole number of things I'm doing wrong...although overall, I'm reasonably happy for a first try... 

And it did give me the opportunity to snip these stills, giving me some interesting and different (if poor quality) photo's for the day.

you dancin'?

I'm going to try to be diligent and practise for a few minutes daily...you should feel free to regularly ask me how I'm getting on with it!

I think it will help me to remain spiritually, psychologically and emotionally centred, balanced and grounded, which is my preferred mode of existence...

More simply put, it helps me to retain my inner peace, no matter how crazy and chaotic the world around me might become...(tho' it doesn't, most of the time, to be fair)...

I guess you can be the judge of that, dear readers...you can decide whether my life appears chaotic or stressful, and how calm I seem in relation to it...if I can persist with the Tai Chi, then it will be interesting to discover what impact, if any, it has on my blogging. 

But no, you're not seeing the video at this point!

It's feasible that the stills are giving the lie to the level of form I have attained...so we'll keep that video firmly locked away, thanks...

;-)