Crossing the "finish" line

Well, on Monday I finally did it. I went through the entire Guang Ping Yang form in it's entirety. What a great experience it was to say I accomplished something I had been dreaming of for 10 years! It's said that a form must be practiced 1,000 times before it becomes yours. That is, that's when it becomes natural and you no longer have to think about the movements, they just happen. Then you can really begin the real work of perfecting them. I'm hoping, either this weekend or next, to videotape myself doing the form so that I can use it as a point of reference where I was at the beginning compared to later. Also, I can use it to look for flaws in my technique and posture and maybe get feedback from fellow Guang Ping'ers. I'm so happy to have discovered Tai Chi and especially Guang Ping. Guang Ping is still relatively small and obscure compared to Yang so it feels almost like a family. I also like that it's a style stripped of all the fluff with definite martial intents.

Now that I've completed the form I've set other goals for myself. Starting this weekend I'm taking one unique movement (of which I counted 37 in the form) and focusing on it for an entire week. This means standing still in the postures of the movement, doing the movement with my eyes closed, repetitions of the movements, learning it's martial applications, and relating the movement to the I Ching. Also, in the middle of April I'm officially starting a 100 day Chin to Toe Challenge with myself. I'm hoping to accomplish this goal by my birthday in July. Now if I could just get rid of this cold!

In other news, we had a great weekend in Washington DC visiting with Dan and Stefanie and seeing the sights. It was great to see them and the girls again. I had wondered if it might be awkward since it had been so long since the last time we saw them, but it was like old times right from the start. Highlights from the trip for me were: doing a soduku puzzle with Savannah the first night(and her giving me a thank you note the next day for helping her), feeding a squirrel out of my hand, and seeing the Declaration of Independence. I only wish it hadn't been so cold and windy out. I also think we need to go back for another weekend because even though we saw alot, there was even more that we didn't see.

Thoughts about life

How do you measure accomplishments? How do you know if you have lived a "good" life?

To me it's if you were mostly happy and mostly healthy. If you loved and were loved in return. If you got out and experienced all that life has to offer (good and bad).

I can see the finish line!

So, 10 years ago I bought a Tai Chi book and DVD. They were Bill Douglas's "Idiot's Guide to Tai Chi" and his "Tai Chi Anthology" DVD. I practiced/played from time to time but never seemed to be able to get beyond lesson 3. There was always an excuse to not continue. There's not enough time, there's not enough room, I'm sick, it's too hard/complicated,etc. Well, last year we moved from Austin, Texas back to Pennsylvania and I managed to survive my first winter up in the frozen tundra of the north. I'm not an outside person in the winter though. It's too easy for me to get sick. So last winter I sat around the house, afraid to go outside and play, doing a little bit of something, and a whole lot of nothing. I felt bored and had to work twice as hard when spring came to get back into shape. When Spring, Summer, and Fall come along I'm good. I've got mountain biking to occupy my need to have something at any given moment to obsess about. When this winter came around I didn't want to do a whole lot of nothing again. So, I committed to sticking with it and learning the entire 64 movements of the Guang Ping Yang Tai Chi form from Bill Douglas's book and DVD. There's been some hiccups along the way, but for the most part I've practiced every day for going on 6 months to learn the form. 6 months ago I didn't know the difference betwen Guang Ping and Yang, or Chen, Sun, or Wu for that matter. I didn't know the importance of stance training, or that you can do more standing still than you can going mindlessly through the form over and over. I feel like I've come so far in such a relatively short amount of time. I have 2 more weeks, 2 more lessons before I can say I've learned all of the movements. I'm excited, and feel like to this point in my life completing this form is one of my life's greatest achievements. I'm excited because this is really just the start of my journey down the rabbit hole of the Tai Chi world. An art that took 6 months to "learn" will take a lifetime to "perfect". There are so many different layer and levels of understanding. I feel I've met a life long friend in Tai Chi. So, thank you Bill Douglas for producing the wonderful DVD and book that has guided me down this path along this journey!


P.S. I'd also like to thank Sifu Kuo Lien-Yang for bringing Guang Ping to America, Simmone Kuo for the wonderful books illustrating the finer details of the form, Petra Martinet for the inspiring video on YouTube that really brings the form to life, and everyone else who practices and plays the Guang Ping form. Without you keeping the art alive and well it wouldn't have been here patiently waiting for me to get off my butt and learn the form 10 years later!