Welcome Back, Old Friend

I turned again today for a little over twenty minutes.... I had intended a longer session, but the natives (read: the kids) were restless (read: fighting), so I had to hang it up earlier than I wanted. I'm impressed somewhat with how stable my emotions remained while I finished out my turning, wound it down, and closed it up... and then when I dealt with the offenders.

Before they broke into my turning time, though, I was glad to welcome back an old friend, one that's been so rarely present in the past six months that I almost forgot he existed. Last summer, for lack of a better term, I called this friend an "arm-leading feeling," and it is an odd sensation that I'm being led around the circle by my arm or that I'm turning almost automatically, though the sensation is powerfully of the "wheeling outward" sort on the lead arm. It was pleasant and short-lived, probably because I gave it attention (which almost always scares it off), but when it happens, it always gives me the impression that I'm doing something right. It's nice to have received some feedback directly from my body, I suppose, and it's particularly nice that the feedback wasn't "way to break me, stupid," like it is sometimes.

After that, I studied the moving with the force forms that I know and thought about their structure and application before stressing my body a bit with more lying-step drills. Finally, I came in and my wife, who happens to be a yoga instructor, inter alia, led the children and I through a brief yin yoga (meridian stretching) session. It was really great and went exceptionally well with the needs of my body until one of the children opened her mouth to say something stupid. My practice wasn't lost, but unfortunately, my wife's composure was almost utterly destroyed when one of the girls said, during a guided meditation, "Mama, it's much easier to relax when people aren't talking so much." I'm guessing, based on the amount of fidgeting, insomnia, and stress-related psychosomatic disorders that the child experiences that she's not much of an expert on relaxing, so I'm not sure where she's coming from. She's also, apparently, no better at tact than she was a month ago.

Soon, meaning tonight or tomorrow, I plan to begin a one-hundred day practice of zhan zhuang, basing my decision upon the obvious benefits it brings to me and the fact that in eleventy billion sources on neigong or (neidan) qigong, the practice is cumulative, each day building on the day before it. It's said that one hundred days will lay a foundation in the practice, and that missing a day requires adding two or three to make up for it. I'm going to test my yi and shen and see what I can do about committing to one hundred consecutive days of thirty or more minutes of zhan zhuang per day. In addition, I'm trying to keep an equal number of consecutive days turning, even if all I have strength or time for is five minutes. Since it's not strictly baguazhang, I don't believe I'm going to keep detailed track of the qigong on here, but I may mention it from time to time, particularly if it impacts my practice.