Wow.. last night about 10 mins into my standing session I really felt the burn in my thighs! I’m taking this to mean the tension is dropping from my hips into my thighs which is a good thing. Started almost shaking a bit until I began to sink deeper into my stance. You’d figure to rise would be better, but actually sinking deeper and relaxing into my posture really helped. I also noticed a bit more tension in the uppper left back region and the tingling in my left foot spiked and then went away. Hopefully these are signs of all the paths opening up or something.
Did some single handed silk reeling to keep the energy flowing and it was nice. I was really able to sink into the ending postures and felt quite solid. I think the standing is really starting to pay off. I did the exercises calmly and not hurrying but really focusing on the flow and sinking into my stances. Not necessarily going lower, but sinking into the gua. As a result, I felt a bit more burn in my thighs, but that’s ok.
This reminds me of some of my sessions where I was corrected on my posture. I would be all low and felt good until the instructor would come along, lift me higher, shift my hips more centered (as I tended to shift my hips over too far in my stances) and then did this “pinching” type of adjustment where he would push into my hips (down) with his thumbs while at the same time lifting my thighs (up) with his fingers. This action really caused me to sink into my gua and I would feel immense pain in my thighs but yet felt solid. This adjustment made me feel as if I was sitting on an imaginary bench or something, quite strange but resulted in a lot pain so I remember the feeling and the adjustments vividly and try to recreate them on my own. At times, I would look down to see where they were but I was told to keep my head erect and try to feel the adjustments, not look at them. This has really helped in my own trainnig as I can often feel where I’m off now.
I kept this mentality while working on the first half of the chen laojia yilu. I focused on the flow and the posture. Trying to sink into my gua with every stance and trying to maintain the calm torso felt during standing practice. Overall, very good session and I was feeeling the burn but at the same time quite calm and relaxed.
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July 29, 2006 at 3:59 pm
wujimon » Night Standing and Morning Form Thoughts
[...] Due to some recent shifts in our schedules, decided to break up the training session a bit. Last night I did 15 mins of zhan zhuang and it was pretty good. It felt as if I was holding a bit too much tension in my thighs.. AGAIN… but I guess that’s a good thing. Not really sure but I’m enduring and pushing through it. To compensate, I brought my stance up a bit higher. I then started getting visions of Fong Ha doing the stand and his posture is quite high. I was playing around a bit with the shifting of left to right as my right hip was feeling tense again. My thoughts started to race so I closed my eyes and focused internally. Thought about my breathing while listening behind. The listening behind actually helps quite a bit and it’s also mentioned in the recent issue of Tai Chi Magazine. [...]
November 14, 2006 at 9:00 am
Hand Corrections - wujimon
[...] This notion of qualitative difference reminds me of a correction I received during a private lesson. In most of my private lessons, we would only get through about 2-3 postures over the course of an hour. The corrections were very detailed and required that I ‘hold’ the correction as the instructor further tweaked my posture. This often resulted in feeling the burn. [...]