Tai chi

I took tai chi early in my druid studies, July 2010-April 2011.  I took it to fulfill a requirement for the AODA curriculum.  At that we had to choose one from a list of areas of study.  One area of study was healing, and one of the requirements was to study a healing art.  I chose tai chi as my healing art.  In December 2010, the AODA curriculum changed, and allowed greater freedom for choosing an area of study.   It  required that we spend at least 20 hours studying our chosen area.  I had already spent more than 20 hours on tai chi.  I did continue with tai chi at that time, but that when we got to the end of the 24 forms, I chose to quit.  I think one of the things that bothered me was that the teacher seemed annoyed at me for not being better at it.  I didn't really feeling paying someone to act annoyed at me.

This summer, they started offering tai chi on lunch hour at my workplace.  I have been to two classes so far.  So far, so good.  I have also been feeling very healthy the past few weeks.  It is possible that the tai chi is the reason, but it seems unlikely that such a small amount of tai chi would have sudden and dramatic effects, especially since it did not have that effect when I was doing it before.

The renewal of my tai chi practice inspired me to take another look at a book I bought when I started tai chi a few years ago, Tai Chi for Beginners and the 24 Forms by Paul Lam and Nancy Kaye.  Much of what I see in the book is like druidry, but there are also places where I feel a sense of cultural incompatibility.  The stories that don't resonate with me culturally:

Chen Fa-ke was sickly and weak as a child....Chen was supposed to be learning too, but he didn't.  He was either too lazy or just not interested...Chen's physical weakness had become an embarrassment to him....Chen used every available minute to practise....Chen had done all the hard work on his own.

and

Chen style was not taught to outsiders.  But Yang was so eager to learn that he pretended to be a starving beggar and....was then taken in and accepted as a servant in the Chen household....Yang would peer through a crack in the wall to watch Chen-style tai chi practice, and then practise in secret....In those days, Yang could have been legally executed for such and act....Yang Lu-chan remains an extreme example of how one can become so addicted to tai chi that one is willing to risk one's life.

What bothers me in these stories is that they are trying to teach the lesson that you can do anything if you are really dedicated and work really hard at it.  To me, these particular stories have a distinctly Chinese flavor to them.  In American culture, we have a similar idea, it just has a different flavor.  In Chinese culture, it seems there is more of an emphasis on dedicated study, while in American culture, there is more emphasis on bold risk-taking, but either way, I don't like it when cultures perpetuate the idea that you can do anything you want if you try hard enough.  That's demeaning for the people who actually can't do something.

Now, what are the things I did like in the book, things that sounded to me much like druidry?  Meditation is part of druidry, and tai chi is a form of meditation.  Both tai chi and meditation include consciousness of breathing and being present in the moment.  The section in the book on qigong breathing reminded me of druidry's Sphere of Protection.  Both are about standing, doing some basic movements, and feeling the life force within and around you.  The concept of yin and yang in tai chi is like the concept of giamos and samos from The Apple Branch.  Druidry is about seeing the world in a cyclical way, the way the year turns from season to season.  The tai chi book says on page 106:

Nature goes in circles.  Fast complements slow.  Full moon alternates with no moon.  It's in our nature to be stressed and relaxed, depressed and happy, moving fast and slow -- as long as appropriate balance is achieved.

Fatigue

I suspect that I'm no longer truly capable of working full-time.  I still do it, but I'm not doing a good job of it.  About two hours before it's time to go, my energy is gone, and I lose my productivity.

In my free time weekends and evenings, there are some things that I do, but I also spend a great deal of time resting.  So many wonderful things are going on -- concerts, dances, singalongs -- and it saddens me to miss so many of them.  In addition, I'd like to take all sorts of classes -- academic, dance, and playing musical instruments.  And I'd like to rollerblade, kayak, hike, snowshoe, and ski.  If I got out more, it would be easier to forge friendships.

And yet, life is never perfect.  I think this is something I can live with.  I do like to stay home and read and listen to music and so forth.  I do enjoy what I have. 

Visualization exercise

There was a visualization exercise in the paganism book I was reading. First you imagine that you put on glasses that cause you to think that everyone doesn't like you. Then you imagine that you put on glasses that cause you to think that everyone likes you. I learned two interesting things from it:

1) In my regular life, I operate as if I expect no one to like me.

2) When I imagined expecting everyone to like me, the biggest thing I noticed was that feeling not sick/not tired was a key ingredient of it.

The fatigue that has been on me since mono is sometimes like walking around carrying a refrigerator on my shoulders. I can pass for normal, i.e. I go to work and get my groceries, there's just this invisible fridge constantly weighing me down.

Except I've been getting better, and right now there is no fridge. Right now, I'm a bird soaring in the sky. With a fridge on my shoulders, it takes all my effort just to put one foot in front of the other. But now that that weight is lifted, I can fly. I can transform into that person who expects people to like her. I can engage in healthy activities, like learning, thinking, creating, and rollerblading.

A good day

Mark this day down in history. Today I was healthy. Not only that, I had a sense of happiness and well-being.

I have actually been healthy for a little over a week now, since I went to the naturopath the Thursday before last.

The sense of happiness and well-being is something that I usually get when I'm on vacation. I get it visiting my mother or visiting my father. I got it at the Clearwater festival. I got it visiting Daisy in Venezuela. I got it going to Maine by myself. And that's most of the vacations I've been on in the past four years. I also got it a week ago. That day I went to the garden, rollerbladed and talked to Daisy on the phone.

The happiness and well-being can come without health. Well, maybe not when I'm feeling regular sick, but if it's just a matter of the post-mono lack of energy, that's okay, because I can be happy spending a cozy day reading indoors.

Today my sense of happiness and well-being emerged when I finished rollerblading. It was further nurtured when I went to the radio station afterwards. I enjoyed listening to music, being around people, and talking to Harry and Rich.