After 10 minutes of practicing Tai Chi Chung, a form of beautiful connected graceful movement, I stopped. I felt like a 75 year old arthritic rigid Karate student trying to break pieces of wood instead of a young swan smoothly and gracefully journeying across a pond.
approached my instructor.
OMG! I got it! – a key to reclaim extraordinary vitality and pleasure in moving my body — and changing one of the biggest blocks to my energy which eventually led me to give up Argentine Tango. My instructor gave me direction on how to change the quality of my movement in a Tai Chi form. Requires a very different way of moving.
My instructor told me to energetically stop spilling out energy, as if keeping water contained in a vessel, within myself.
I was still recovering from a bad injury from two weeks ago, so I could not do the lesson my instructor was teaching Tuesday night. Instead he directed me to work on Tai Chi Chung. After working on it for 10 minutes I asked how I could move with better quality.
And even though he told me a number of things, what he started with got my attention. He told me that I was throwing out my energy, spilling it like a vessel. The quality of Tai Chi Chung movement he directed me to approximate was similar to keeping water in a vessel, or energetically containing my energy.
He nailed how I use my energy in my life, that I spill out my energy. Wow! I love it when I am told something straight-on that is a life issue.
He gave me specific ways I could work to achieve this quality of movement.
- Energetically – stop spilling out energy, as if keeping water contained in a vessel
- Breathe and move as breath
- Follow the hands and movement with my eyes
- Integrate all parts of body as I moved
- Be able to move in another direction at any given time
- Flow in movement where not a single part of the body at any time chugs/ is dropped/ unaware of it/ not smooth …
I understood what he was saying to a large extent because why I stopped dancing Tango in large part was that I hurt in my body, always getting tense, and feeling very choppy and moving with a lot of staccato.
And as I did this, my body had to work to keep incorporating all parts of it. And pain came up, where to keep every part of my body engaged and in tune with other parts, I felt pain – I could not just throw out a body part, like my fist by giving it a pulse of info but I had to use a stream of info. Huge distinction I use in teaching and dancing Tango.
However, I have not felt this in years. The pinnacle of feeling great in my body movement in Tango only happened a few times. Each is etched in my memory – the time I went into slight anaphylactic shock with shrimp, and in trying to calm my body down, I took 100 mg of . I tranced and went into a deep relaxation – also coming off of great shock to my nervous system.
hat I had to rebuild my body for. Why I chose to do so many other things over Tango, even though my heart and soul relishes Tango. I got it. What did I get?
Or the time I danced in a lesson with Michelle Erdemsel??? and relaxed fully. Or the time at the end of a Denver festival I moved so smoothly I felt like poetry in motion – really, as corny as it sounds I felt fully integrated in my body, full of pleasure as I moved every part of it. I wonder if dancers feel this and is the reason why they dance so much? Pleasure in my body – foreign to me, yearned by me, denied by me!
I have seen people move like this. Only a few. One man in the Seattle community, Vladimir, moves with this sense. Smooth. Interconnected. Graceful and full of ease. Because of this and his musicality, he inspires me more than any dancer for I want to MOVE like he does.