In the Moment
Sifu Dennis is always telling us, with our Tai Chi, to stay in the moment. We have a tendency to anticipate the next move, and very often, without even realizing, our body starts moving towards the next step, without fully completing the one we're on.
Staying in the moment is actually very difficult when working on something that requires physical movement. At least it has been for me. Initially, your main focus is just remembering the steps to a form (or an application with a sequence of moves). So it's quite natural that you start thinking of the next step prematurely. If you don't, you end up stalling out, losing your momentum, and find yourself standing there lost. You basically lose your train of thought. So to avoid that, you will often have the next several moves all lined up in your head, ready to go.
Now I think this is okay at first. It's important to get the steps memorized. If you don't know the steps, you can't really practice much. The downside here is that you aren't really giving each technique your full attention. And I think this can have a couple different results. Either you end up rushing the technique...or you may end up not fully completing it at all. I suppose it could also be a combination of the two.
Whenever I am practicing my forms, right from the beginning of my training, I have always found myself thinking that I'm going too fast and that I need to slow down. And so I would start over, with the intent of going slower at the forefront of my mind....but it would never fail that I'd just end up hammering through again the exact same way. I always wondered why this was. I always wondered why I couldn't seem to slow down even though I was specifically trying to. I know we all end up developing our own "style" when it comes to forms. So I thought that maybe this was just my "style".....the speedy Gonzales style. But now I don't think this was right. I think it was my inability to stay in the moment with each technique. I was going from one step to the next by memory alone, and because I had several steps lined up in my head, I just naturally sped through them faster than I would have liked.
This morning I felt a change. I started my Lao Gar form with Sifu Dennis in my mind telling me "stay in the moment". And for once, I actually seemed to be able to do just that and got some first hand experience with how this should feel. Each step seemed fulfilled. Each technique complete. It didn't seem so choppy...so fast. I felt as though I just flowed from one technique to the next. Like each technique was both separate, and connected.
Now having said that, I couldn't tell you if this change was physical (ie. external) or if it was more to do with my energy (ie. internal). In the moment it felt like it could have been both.....but most definitely internally. In hindsight I wish I had taken a video because it would be interesting to know if anything seemed different from an external viewpoint. I'll make sure to get a video next time....assuming I will be able to repeat this moving forward.
Maybe I just had a great "one-off" morning. Or maybe I have done enough repetitions of Lao Gar that I've entered the next stage where I won't have to necessarily anticipate the next move anymore. Maybe what I'm experiencing is a shift from memorized techniques, to more natural ones.
Who even knows the answer....not I. But I will keep you posted.
Malinda Ferris
