by Walter Wong » Wed Jan 04, 2006 9:19 am
Well, the first step is to do the form as accurately as you can. Police every small detail in your physical movements and stances. You can only stop thinking about the form if you can do it as naturally as you walk.
Can't begin to feel until you stop thinking. And you can't stop thinking til you do the form accurately.
When the form begins to feel like 2nd nature, then in between practicing the form, do this little excersise:
With your palms relaxed, have them face each other. Put your hands around your stomach height. From here look for a repulsing feeling like facing a north end of a magnet to another north end of a magnet. Like the magnets repelling each other with the same north ends or south ends, your palms will feel a similar repelling each other. Now don't look too hard for the feeling. Just relax and only pay attention.
This brings an interesting feeling. I was told this is your chi. And whatever one may call it, there's something there.
Playing this way with my palms feeling the magnetic repelling, I integrated it into my Tai Chi. During certain movements I feel my hands and sometimes arms move out from the repelling feeling. When my hands or arms came inward during a part of a form, it was like the magnetic feeling of north end and south end of 2 magnets face each other pulling each other in, this feeling helped bring my arms in.
It's tough to describe this stuff in text. It's so much easier in person to show.
Anyways, so far, that's what I'm playing with in Tai Chi. So far I haven't achieved this similar feeling in my legs.
Occassionally practicing Tai Chi feels like I'm at the bottom of a swimming pool and I'm feeling like I'm waving my hands through water. These aren't obvious feelings. You just pay attention and it's like you're in a different world.
Somethings are just there. Just because you don't see it, don't mean it's not there.
Like wind. You can't see it, but you can feel it and you know it's there. You see the affect wind has on objects around, but yet you can't see the actual wind itself.
This is a thought world part of a thought universe. Man is the center of thought. "I think. Therefore I am."