Here they are: yin and yang. Looking as tired as I feel.

I just spent the morning doing Tai Chi with the master, who comes to this area several times a year. I have been learning this form for a little more than a year – these gatherings draw people from several states – and I was VERY aware of how beginning level I am. My legs hurt after one hour.

The reason they hurt is that we were going soooooo slowly. To stay in a crouch, even a moving crouch for that long: my legs burned. In learning and practicing, I have gone at a much faster pace. Partly, it’s so that there is time to teach the long sequences, it’s done faster in regular classes. But also, I didn’t realize that it can be, in fact, MORE work to go so slowly. It was astonishingly more work. Instead of “slow down, take it easy”, it’s “slow down, really feel this”.

I did come home in a great mood. For all the difficulty, the slow steady movement was good for my nervous system. Even energizing.

And it was an eye opener. I live in such a quiet place. And yet still feel the need to move quickly, to hurry. This offered an alternative.

I may never move at that slow a pace in my daily life. But the infusion was welcome. And, after all the kerfuffle of the recent trip, it was the yin part of the yang: just what I needed.