So, what have you gotten from Tai Chi?

Still liking the cell phone camera

On Sunday morning, I returned from Tai Chi at my usual 11:45. As I was driving up to my house, I saw Harry. Harry is my neighbor and good friend. Harry and I have had probably hundreds of hours of conversation over the years that we have been neighbors. Most every time that I see him, I come into my house, make a quick change of clothes, and head back down the street to talk to him. I’m 48, Harry is 65.

And so it was Sunday that after I was in the house for about 10 minutes, there was a knock on the door. Harry as at the door inviting me down to his ‘office’. His office is his garage. We each pull up a chair, sit there talk, have a soft drink, and watch our dogs play, Hobbs and Poo. We discus all manner things, even the taboo ones such as religion and politics. Harry is a Jehovah’s Witness. Here in the US, jokes abound about them because of their pushiness and general annoying tendencies to wake one up early Saturday morning with a knock at the door and a Watchtower in hand. Harry, though he used to go door to door on Saturday morning, is not very pushy. We respect each other.

As we sat in his ‘office’, he said: Paul, you’re looking great. Is Tai Chi working for you? What have you gotten from it? My immediate response was that yes, it was working for me, but I didn’t attribute the weight loss to Tai Chi. At the time, I couldn’t exactly put my finger on what I’d gotten from it. Last night, I think that I figured it out …

Last night, during our Zen Super Boot Camp workout, we played a game, Kick Ball, which I hadn’t played since I was a child. Basically, kick ball goes by the same rules as baseball, but instead of using a baseball and a bat, you use a ball, about the size of a soccer ball and your foot to kick it. Yesterday, during the game, I caught 3 fly balls. One was very much out of range and most thought that it was going to be a home run, but I just believed that I could run fast enough and get to it. I got to it, too! After the game, Rick, the guy who kicked the ball said: Man! I didn’t know that you could move like that. I answered, quite honestly, that I didn’t know it either.

During our Tai Chi workouts when we are practicing the various stances and sweat is dripping and my muscles are on fire and it feels like my knees are going to buckle … during the time when we have to hold the Universal Post for what seems like forever and my muscles in my shoulder are begging for relief, during the time that we are asked to run just a little bit more when oxygen seems to be quite a bit short, and during the time when we do almost endless repetitions of pulling the bow, or some other Tai Chi move and I just don’t see how I can continue … during that time when I hold on, that is when a new belief system is being built, one second at a time.

Overall, what I’m getting from Tai Chi and my association with The Peaceful Dragon, is a new belief system. A belief system that tells me to try ‘it’, whatever ‘it’ is, because you have no idea what you are capable of. The best thing of all is that it is an internal belief, not external.

So, two months in, this is what I’ve learned. When I ran to try to catch that ball, the voice in my head now says, go for it, you can get to it, instead of the old script of, don’t even try, you’ve not got a chance. It’s quite a change! It’s not magic and I’m sure that everyone probably gets something different.