Not Just Going Through the Motions

Last night, I was just getting into bed, when the shocking realization hit me. "Oh, my God!"

My husband sat bolt upright in bed. "What?!" he asked in alarm.

"I can't believe it! I forgot to do T'ai Chi!"

"Oh, my God!" he agreed, just as shocked as I was. "Can you do it now?" he asked.

I looked at the clock. 12:34. Ugh. "No," I sighed, dismally aware I was letting myself down. "It's too late."

"Just do 5 minutes," he suggested. (My anchor!)

"OK." I decided to do one pass through the part of the form I know so far, which takes 12 or 13 minutes. (So, more than 5! Yay for me!)

I didn't feel like going out into the back yard at that time of night. We have a large family room with enough space to do T'ai Chi, if you move furniture out of the way. I went downstairs, in the ready-for-bed state I was in, which included bare feet.

I skipped the warm-up entirely. So I observed that my knees were a bit creaky. My high kicks were not so high. Bare feet on carpet presents its own kind of challenge to the balance. I didn't feel like moving furniture, so my space wasn't quite wide enough, so this meant creatively modifying some movements to stay within the confined space. All of these hindrances actually drew my attention more into the moment.

I could have literally just gone through the motions, just to be able to say I hadn't skipped. Instead, it became an interesting new experience. Entertaining. Playing T'ai Chi.