Knee to Wall (or Bed)

Yes! I did my T'ai Chi Chih practice this morning before work which left me feeling relaxed and ready for the onslaught of people, books, CDs, and DVDs that awaited me at the library. When I arrived at work, my boss--one of my T'ai Chi Chih students--told me that she'd done her TCC practice before coming to work too.

During practice I inadvertently stepped close enough to the guest room bed to allow my knee to touch the edge (two futon matresses high) when I shifted my weight forward. Terrific! It offered me the perfect opportunity to practice and notice whether I overextended or underextended my knee during my forward weight shift.

Another TCC teacher told me about the above-mentioned strategy (learned during the 2009 T'ai Chi Chih Teachers' Conference). Participants were taught to check their posture and stance by first, placing their backs to the wall and then shifting their weight forward and back. (Question: What part of your body touches the wall first when shifting backward?)

In another strategy practitioners turned their bodies 180 degrees, placed the tips of their toes against the wall, and shifted their weight forward to doublecheck whether knees wanted to extend beyond the tips of toes. (It's difficult, to say the least, to look down and guesstimate whether the front of the knee and the tip of the toe align with each other.)

I'd planned to practice this technique but hadn't managed to do so. Now I had the perfect opportunity. In addition, this against-the-bed setup allowed me to move my hands and arms fully because I didn't have to accommodate a wall standing directly in front of me.

It was a bit disconcerting to feel the edge of the bed against my knee but also a valuable feedback loop to think about--and feel--the positioning of knee to toe. Next I'll try this strategy against a wall just for the sake of comparison.

Oh, isn't TCC practice grand? There is always (always, always) a new strategy, technique, or feedback loop to play with, experiment with, and/or try, fail, succeed, and keep learning....