Training revealed struggle, feeling

“Struggle” and “feeling” are two major words in my practice of T’ai Chi Chih. Being physically challenged since my fourteenth birthday with a stiff leg, I became a compulsive perfectionist hiding my disability. Feeling became frozen like cement from my waist to my toes. My head was the think tank. All my actions became think actions. The struggle to prevent anyone from seeing a weakness in my physical manner soon became an outer coat of strength from the waist up. Learning how to walk straight without shifting or swiveling the waist was the goal of my early years as a professional teacher.

Forty-some years later, T’ai Chi Chih enters my wholistic mind set for my senior years of life. This gentle practice opened me to new insights into the deep dark unknown within my own being. It was an invitation to discover my center from a different perspective. A perspective of FEELING. Again struggle returned with a vengeance in my body. Modern surgery and physical therapy enabled me to walk without dragging my leg. Feeling is not in my legs but I am able to move about more freely without dancing, jumping or skipping. T’ai Chi Chih gave me a graced movement that opened me to an energy that sought the deeper well that was clogged. T’ai Chi Chih became like tear drops upon a cement wall. After four years of this gentle movement the cement wall is becoming soft mush, not there yet!

Attending the Teacher Training Course in October of 2000 [in PA] put my struggle into the open arena of FEELING. If I heard once “Soft Knees”, “let go of tension”, “in your feet”, I heard these and more even in my sleepless nights. The week was a moving meditation of stone being chiseled away softly from my center. It was a difficult time for me, a professional perfectionist learning to bend softly, swivel from the waist and feeling the chi move freely within my interior. The emotional breakdown from the deep core of my person was imperative for me to truly allow T’ai Chi Chih [to] do T’ai Chi Chih. This beautiful movement has opened a new vision for me. Dawn has always been a special time for me. With the spiritual practice of T’ai Chi Chih, I greet the “Kiss of Dawn” everyday moving with more feeling each day. I am grateful that Ed Altman saw my “struggle” and recognized my “feeling” even in the cement.