Body Intuition

I started going to a Tai Chi class.  Forever and a year ago, I went to a couple of Tai Chi classes when I was in Scotland, but, yikes, that was over ten years ago now, and I cannot say that I remembered anything really.  Anyway, the group has been very welcoming and excited to teach me new things.  I'm excited to learn new things, so this works out admirably.  

It occurs to me that my movement would have been very different at other times of my life.  Where I'm at now, I've been to many Zumba and other dance aerobics classes, meaning that I can pick up on patterns reasonably well.  For complicated movements, I start with getting the feet right and add the arms or other elements later.  I'm also not afraid to throw in my own style, test out slight variations for an extra bit of sass.  

Somewhere along the way and partially tied with therapy, I started watching for movements that felt "right."  There were some movements that resonated differently, that were completing an action I didn't realize I needed.  As an example, I have been doing some individual songs from the YouTube channel TheFitnessMarshall and putting them in a playlist to work through at home.  Sometimes it was the song itself was a favorite, but the blocking arms above the head in the chorus of this one resonated with me.  I was returning to it, with the song in my head at work and all else.  I started to notice like moves that drew me back in, pausing to come back to that feeling as necessary.  

So for Tai Chi, well, there are many moments that make a flavor of sense, allowing a bit of disassociation in adapting to the natural flow of the movement, to pause and see how that registers in the body.  Listening for the flow of energy in the movement and how it disperses in the body.  Completing the movement while allowing the mind to wander in different ways.  In short, it's a new avenue of self-discovery.  

There are places where my body is smarter than I am.  There are conversations where I have noticed that I left clenching certain muscle groups, and I have to ask myself what about that conversation bothered me.  Driving up on 39, my body still has a freeze response, remembering trips past on the same path to the Mayo Clinic.  The body remembers.  The body realizes things before my brain does sometimes.  

And these signals have been there, more that I am learning better how to pause and listen.

As I was going through physical therapy for my ankle, I remember discussing with my physical therapist that I could go up and down stairs, but it required a lot of thinking.  We agreed that the best situation was to no longer have to have that awareness, where movements felt automatic and cohesive again.  And yet, that kind of awareness is something I want to build on.  Awareness to all stimuli at once is not safe, let alone possible, but checking in with my body before it forces me to, that's something that I want to develop.