Last night during zhan zhuang, I had quite a difficult time releasing the tension from my calves. I tried to use quite a bit of mental imagery of melting down, sinking to bubbling well and into the earth, etc etc, but it was difficult.

Then I remembered a story I read about TT Liang encountering a taoist recluse in the mountatins. I believe the story goes that Liang was showing him the form and when he got to the ‘rooster stands on one leg posture’ the taoist said, ‘no good, no good’. The taoist then approached Liang, touched his calf and said ‘wood’. The taoist then did the posture himself and asked Liang to touch his calf and to Liang’s amazement, it was soft as cotton.

At this point, I would say my calves are like decomposing wood, still slighty soft, but brittle. Softer than metal, but not as soft as wood. Someday, perhaps I can achieve cotton.

Not sure if it’s the reduction in coffee, the increase in sleep, the increase in meditation or all of the above, but lately I’ve been feeing much more ‘alert’ when I do taiji. I have basically modified my own schedule to include zazen and zhan zhuang before bed. In addition, I have cut out ALL coffee intake and try to get to bed by 10pm resulting in an average of 6.5 hrs of sleep a night.

In the past, I have written about how felt sleepy during meditation [If you're tired then sleep] but lately I no longer feel tired. Sure, sometimes I don’t ‘feel’ like meditating and would rather just go straight to bed, but I choose to ‘sit hard’, and ‘just do it’.

I start off the session with some basic breath counting, usually 2 cycles of 10 counts, and then I just sit. Even if I start off the zazen session tired, once I get into it, I feel very alert.  Time also seems to pass by much quicker now and I don’t have as much pain in the back or legs as before.  When I feel like it, I then switch over to a standing zhan zhuang wuji posture and then cycle through a couple of yiquan postures.

With the energy flowing, I go straight into some form practice. Lately, I have been concentrating 90% of my time on Yang taiji.  There’s just something about the Yang form.. plus, when I have tried chen, my knees will soon start to hurt, even in a high stance. I still think it has a lot to do with the side to side shifting in Chen, whereas the Yang is more forward and back movements. My knees like forward and back movements

It is quite nice to go directly into form work after a good session of meditation. My mind is clear and I feel alert. A couple of nights ago, I felt as if my eyes were like a hawk flying through the air looking for the mouse in the field. I know.. a bit cheesy on the imagery, but that’s exactly how I felt. As I moved, I was completely aware of my surroundings and body. My steps were light and nimble and I exerted just enough muscle to correctly form the shapes I was after.

One of the nice side effects is I have absolutely no issue falling asleep afterwards. Before, I used to be a bit wired and found it slightly difficult but now it’s a cinch. I likey