Form That Arrives Like a Memory

For the first time in weeks, I closed my eyes and sleep found me without a fight. I'm not entirely sure why, but I suspect it has something to do with beginning Tai Chi 108.

After more than a year of practicing TaiChi 28 and the 13, this new form arrives feeling strangely familiar — and yet, as always, completely different. Many of the movements are ones I know. But as today made clear, many others will take time. Real time. The unhurried, unglamorous kind.

Even so, at this early stage, I think I'm beginning to understand why those who practice 108 love it the way they do — quietly, without an announcement. You don't hear them talk about it. You see it instead, in the knowing smiles, in the particular peace that seems to accompany every step they take. Something is carried in this form that words don't quite reach.

I took it easy today. Left the bag of weapons in the room and gave myself entirely to the new form. Things moved slowly, and the practice — while still demanding — was genuinely enjoyable. It reminded me of my earliest days at the school, when Tai Chi was the only thing on the horizon and the days passed without fuss, without the quiet pressure of having almost too much to practice. There was an ease to those days that I find myself missing more than I expected. I'm not sure what changed exactly — perhaps it's simply the constant pursuit of more that creates its own particular current of unease, pulling you slightly away from the thing you came here for.

It's not something that troubles me. But it's worth being aware of.

It brings to mind one of the Dao's quieter teachings — that the harder you try to hold something, the faster it slips through your hands. I find myself returning to that idea more and more lately. Not as a lesson I've mastered, but as one I'm slowly beginning to feel the truth of.

Time has moved further than I could have imagined from those first days stepping through the school doors. Getting to know myself has been the longest work of all — endless, by its very nature, and probably meant to be. But if there is one thing I am certain of, it is simply this: the more Tai Chi I practice, the better I feel. Everything else remains a question. That part, at least, is not.