Building Potential
By De Anna Beasley
I recently took an opportunity to return home for the weekend to see my family and pick up a Tai Chi class or two. I was eager to be back in the classroom. Moving to a new city drastically depleted my financial resources and so starting at a new school didn’t seem practical.
I was diligent enough in my own training that I had very little worry of losing what I’ve learned, but I felt like I was missing out by not being in class regularly.
One of the things I enjoy most about class is hearing Sifu’s pearls of wisdom. I often find them to be very timely and can usually tie them to my own life circumstances. This time was no different: “Class is where you learn Tai Chi. At home is where you build skill.”
As much as I love being in class and around friends, I’m realizing more and more the importance of having good training habits away from class. Living three and a half hours away has forced me to be more mindful of those habits. So while attending class is good for refining and learning skill (and seeing friends. I must admit that I am a social bug!), it’s ultimately what you do outside of class that will determine how well you ingrain the art into your life.
So what can you do to ensure that what you learn in class becomes skill at home? For me, it’s finding small moments out of the day to practice –especially if I learned a new move. I mentally go over the movements and then physically go through it whenever I have a moment. For example, in graduate school, I used the elevator ride from the bottom to the top floor of the building to practice my active stepping (but only if I was alone!).
In the car or standing in line at the store, I practiced Wu Chi by aligning my body and breathing deep to my lower Dan Tien. When I had my knee injury and couldn’t participate fully in class, I worked on my flexibility. It paid off in that “Lying Leg” and other postures don’t seem so impossible now!
This past weekend was a good reminder for me that my training outside of class is very important. Even those small, seemingly inconsequential moments of mental and physical practice add up over time to true potential.
–De Anna Beasley is a Postdoctoral Researcher at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC.