Tai Chi And My Misconceptions.

Coffee at Cafe Mila

I think I have mentioned before that I really enjoy going to Cafe Mila in Godalming and how it is linked with the Yoga Vita Studio. To be honest, I am much better at drinking James' coffee than I am attending any of the classes, but when I saw that they were starting a new class on a Thursday morning, I felt that I really needed to give it a try.

Tai Chi is often used at Jing to start the day before the learning begins, so my past experience of 'flapping my arms around' has just been to wake my body up a bit before we used to hit the anatomy books. I was also taught how to use a couple of standing stances and ways of moving around the massage couch that were loosely based on Tai Chi. Loosely is the word.

So a couple of days ago I asked David, (my husband and long standing sufferer of my many fads,) what he thought of me doing a Tai Chi class. His response was that if I wanted to do some mystic dancing and channel some spiritual stuff around my body, go ahead and see how it goes.


Between my arm flapping and his mystic dance we couldn't have been more wrong about Tai Chi.

All 4 look as if they are different, but all are moving perfectly
for their own bodies. Not jarring any joints; just flowing. 

My lesson was led by Debbie Heaney and there was 3 of us in her class at Yoga Vita this morning. The first thing that struck me was how she emphasized the idea that we are simply there to move our energy in sequence; there is no perfect way and the only thing we should think about is the quality of our movement, not that we are doing it perfectly. We should not think about doing it 'right', we should just move in a way that is comfortable to our own body; so if we need to sit on a chair to do it, then we sit. If we can walk, we walk. If we can't lift our arms up, we just do what we can.

Tai Chi is a martial art! It was very surprising to me that such a fluid looking form of movement is a combative art that can be traced back more than 4,000 years. As we move, we encourage the Chi energy to flow around the meridians of our body. Debbie used Chi Gung with the Tai Chi so that the harmony between our health and well-being was balanced.

I really enjoyed my hour learning how to move with more thought and tuning in to my body a bit more. I like the way that there are no positions that we have to 'hit' perfectly, there isn't any pressure on the joints and that there is power behind the moves. It was paced to a very steady tempo and it helped calm my mind whilst leaving me with a sense of achievement and energy to get on with the rest of my day.

No arm flapping, mystic spiritual dancing or chanting ... In one hour all misconceptions fell apart. I love that the most!