A New Friend Every Time

And just like that, it was over.

The review of Tai Chi 13 took little more than three days, and in the end, it gave me exactly what I'd hoped for, as simple as I'd imagined it might be. Over those three days, with Louis watching every movement with a critical eye, we worked through the whole form, stopping wherever something needed fixing. Fun, rewarding, and more than a little eye-opening, I hadn't realised how many small details had drifted quietly off course.

Thirteen was the third form I ever learned, back on my first visit to Wudang, and if I'm honest, it never quite earned the depth of attention that let it settle fully into me. So I'm genuinely glad to have gone through it detail by detail. It feels different now, closer to a new friend than an old habit, greeting me fresh every time I shift onto the left foot, breathe, and let my hands rise toward the sky.

Going forward, I want to keep this simple. A form left unpracticed is a form quietly forgotten. So each day, one by one, I'm moving through everything I've learned, and the weight of all these small corrections is starting to compound, every fix in one form bleeding gently into all the others, like knowledge falling steadily from somewhere above, not meant to be gripped, only noticed and let go.

The strangest thing this past week has been this: the calmer I stayed about my own mistakes, the more other students started coming to me for help with theirs. I gave what I could, gladly.

There's a particular kind of closeness that comes from still being a student yourself while helping someone else learn, maybe because I'm still near enough to the beginning to remember what it feels like from there. What that's taught me, simply put, is that I want to stay a student for the rest of my life. Even on the days I find myself teaching.