Sunday, May 24, 2009

Slow != Correct

For those who don't do programming, the symbol '!=' means 'not equal to'.

A friend of mine said that when driving a car, "slow doesn't mean safe". That is true, but I also have to add that "fast is inherently dangerous".

In taiji, when practising your routines, slow doesn't mean correct. But similarly, fast is fundamentally wrong.

My teacher takes about 40 minutes to complete a set of Yang style 108. For me, I took about 30 minutes. But the difference is that, when I am doing my set, I move so slowly that I seem to have pauses in between, which is fundamentally wrong. Yet my teacher finishes his set in a longer time, without appearing to have pauses. Why?

I think the answer is that he completes each movement fully, while for me, I sometimes move into the next movement without completing the previous one (because my kua is still not relaxed enough to allow me to turn fully). So the important thing is to complete each movement, and keep moving continuous so that there are no pauses.

3 comments:

Linda said...

Hi Vincent,
Good to read your blog - it's very informative. I attended the same Taiji instructor's course as you. BTW, congrats on the new addition to your family.
Best wishes,
Linda
www.mytaijijourney.blogspot.com

Teck said...

Thanks for visiting my blog. I noticed that you have been appearing in the papers lately. Added your blog to my links section, hope you don't mind. Noticed that the two blogs seem to have very similar names. :)

L said...

Hi
Sure thing (for the link). As for the papers - very pai-seh.