Tai chi classes

My tai chi classes started again this week. I much prefer doing tai chi in a group to practicing alone. I'm feeling quite pleased with myself for having kept up practice over the Christmas break. I took special trouble to focus on a sequence that I know I'm weak on, and was quite pleased when we got to that part and I passed through it smoothly.

After warm up and going through the form we tried a new exercise. The purpose of it is to develop a sense of where your partners 'root' is. Your partner stands still with their arms folded, feet shoulder-width apart and sinks their weight down into the ground. You do the same and place your hands on their elbows. Slowly, without pushing, you then sink into their space, sensing where they are rooted and eventually uprooting them, so they have to step back or fall over. The movement is very very subtle. An observer would only see two people standing still. It doesn't feel like pushing either - as I stood there with my arms folded, all I could feel was my centre of gravity shifting slowly backwards, making it harder and harder to keep my balance. On the other side it doesn't feel like pushing either, I just tried to feel where my partner was rooted and expand my root into that space. Very little happened for a long time until suddenly they went.

Having experienced tai chi it's very easy to believe in concepts like chi energy. Some people where quite happy to speak in those terms to describe what they were doing. I'm not ready to believe such a thing exists in an objective measurable sense. It does, however, match my subjective experience, so for the practical purpose of learning tai chi it's the best way to visualise what's going on. Just one more impossible thing to believe before breakfast!

In exercises like this I find that every partner is different, and I'm different with every partner. Some seem heavy, some light, some stiff, some flexible. You don't often get the opportunity to read someone like that.