Exhausting & Amazing Intensive

I just completed my first intensive. For decades I’ve been doing many kinds of yoga and meditation. One morning about six years ago I woke up and just couldn’t hold another pose. I was a new employee at The Marsh – The Center for Fitness and Balance (known worldwide for its mind/body/spirit philosophy). We offered classes in Taiji so I took one and fell in love. That was the start of years of learning many forms. Three years ago, when I spent the winter in Florida, I looked up local Taiji classes and all that was available was something called T’ai Chi Chih. So I signed up to explore it. Little did I know where it would lead. My love for it was somehow deeper than the other forms I knew. At the time I couldn’t decide if this was about the environment (doing TCC in a forest of 80-foot bamboo trees), my teacher (Deb Stump-Berger) or the practice.

I came home to Minnesota and got back into my Taiji world at The Marsh. After about a year I realized that I really missed TCC. I looked around and there it was, almost in my own backyard. When I began practicing, that love that I felt in Florida came back. With TCC I felt the Chi so much more quickly, and it stayed with me throughout the day. It provides a place I can go for peace, where I can revisit being centered. My emotional and spiritual being can go here to be renewed. I reflect differently. I play with beauty and joy differently. My senses are so sharpened that I hear, smell, see, taste and feel this world differently – all of it: joy, sadness, happiness, sorrow. I am more open to connecting with my whole being. With all this wonderment, my stress levels are more controlled.

Back to the intensive – yup, it was just that. It was completely exhausting and by the fourth day my shoulder had nothing left in it. But I loved every minute of it. Sandy was amazing and our two incredible hosts (Susan and Judy) guided our group with humor, integrity and many caring suggestions. I came away with needing to keep my movements smaller. I’d been extending my arms too far away from my body. Keep it smaller. I felt this immediately. I felt more connected to my center and so moved from my center more freely. What a fabulous feeling. So glad that TCC is in my life, that my being is filled with pure joy.