Chen

Finally got a follow-up lesson in Chen Style over the weekend – spent a morning in the park reviewing the old and plunging further into the new than expected. There is no regular class for this one, so there are some long gaps between lessons, long sessions of self-practice. That approach has worked well for me in areas in which I have some grounding, some foundation. But Chen Shi is so different from the other styles of tai ji I have studied.

Once again, I dug out that old video of me working through a Chen form with Di Ma back in Nebraska almost fifteen years back. On a whim, I tried yet again to find a trace of her on the internet, having lost contact over the years. This time, I found something, a healing festival in which she had participated (she had begun to teach much more Qi Gong just about the time I left Lincoln). Still waiting for a reply from the contact addresses I found on the site…

My movements were so stiff and clunky…maybe I will look back on my current self, fifteen years down the road, and say the same thing again. But these cycles can only lead up – the clunkiness of 15 years ago, of 10 years, 5 years back. What I may come to see in the future as the clunkiness of 2008…surely the level of klunk is moving upward?

Spiraling upward, not merely circling on a flat, horizontal plane. That kind of spiraling is supposed to be a key element of Chen Style, though you wouldn’t know it from my current level of klunk. For now, it is all corners, but they will be slowly rounded down and made beautiful. I have the feeling I am going someplace good…