Learning to walk TaiChi Style

So today's TaiChi lesson boiled down to learn how to transition from our 'ready' stance to a couple of stances that we will learn to use regularly as time progresses.  At the start everything went fine.  We started in a Left Front Bow Stance, which is where you stand with your left leg forward of your right leg.  Your front leg supports about 70% of your weight with the rear leg supporting 30%.  We began an exercise of controlling the transition by just practicing sliding from the front foot to the rear foot all while trying to keep your head from bobbing up and down or your hips from moving to some odd angle from the rest of your body.  Surprisingly this is not as easy as you may think.  Trying to keep your hips, shoulders, and head straight while you move slowly from the front to back takes a bit of concentration.  It is amazing what bad habits we form in our daily life.

From there we learned how to transition from our bow stand of one leg to another leg (from left front leg to right front leg).  This is where my legs started not speaking politely to me.  The transition happens when your front foot draws up on the heel and then turns outward to a 45 degree angle.  The hips track with the foot so  they are both aligned when this move is complete.  When the front foot is down, you transfer your weight to that front planted foot and then draw up your rear foot to your front foot.  This is where my quads start complaining, which makes me quickly place that raised foot forward into a Front Bow stance.  This produces the 'Whewwww....' effect.  This is where I am elated that both of my feet are on the ground and that (even for a brief second) I'm not moving.

After we got this move down initially, we instructor asked us to make a circle so that we could all work on our TaiChi walk together.  At first we made a circle, but we started a bit too close.  This made the fast walkers move right onto the heals of the student in front of them.  Since we were moving in a left handed circle it seemed to me that we were performing the TaiChi walk 'NASCAR' style.  Since we are in Charlotte, NC (the home of NASCAR) it only seemed fitting.  I was just waiting for one of the students that were walking quickly to step on a student's shoe in front of them creating a flat tire, forcing them into the wall then to the floor.  This of course would send out the yellow flag and force the rest of us to go EVEN SLOWER as we made our way around the tragic scene.  As you can see my brain thinks up some pretty weird stuff while walking in a circle trying to just stay upright.

The word of the week will be 'practice'.  If I don't practice that walk, I won't get better at it and I will continue to have non-friendly conversations with my legs.  So if you see me walking to the copier at work and it takes me 10 minutes to get 20 feet, just understand that I am not just slow.  I 'm just working on my walk.