Taiji open class

It was pretty long time ago I blogged about my progress in Taijiquan, but this time I think it's worth a new entry:

I joined an open class for all levels on Friday evening because the regular classes were skipped due to holiday and celebration days. So it was the only possible opportunity to get a proper training within two weeks.
This time our chefcoach (we don't call him sifu) led the class - actually we call each other by first name. It was my first taiji training led by him. Except one other girl from my beginner class the other participants were from his very advanced class. We started with some stretching, a proper warm up and some final stretching. After this we did some partner exercises to get a better feeling for the right balance but also how to learn pushing someone away. This was kinda fun but also pretty exhausting, though I lost most of the battles against my partner because my position was too high (which he told me afterwards while correcting us during the form) and i was not flexible enough in the upper part of the body. Next time I will do it better, I hope!
Afterwards we started with the Yang 24. This time I had the opportunity to run the form in the middle, which irritated me a bit  because in the beginner class I already belong to the advanced ones which usually means that I have to take position at one edge in order to help the newbies. But I got through it pretty well. We continued with the Yang 42, of which I can only run a small part and I had to step aside when the part I knew was finished. Nevertheless watching the 42 was pure joy and I look really forward to learning the rest (ähhem 75% or so?).
Then we split the classes. The other girl from my class and I repeated the 24 on our own while the others did one form (out of Chen and Wu) after another. In between our chefcoach corrected us and it was simply incredible to run the 24 with him because he has a very dynamic approach and corrected us, though I needed far less corrections than the other girl from our class although she trains much longer than I. We were not able to complete it with corrections but there's enough to think of and adapt in the next usual lessons. I know now that I have to make bigger steps - and I was like "oohh really?" - because I already do bigger steps than most of the other of our classes - but ok I will give it a try - maybe I have the longest legs?!
 
Because of this I got difficulties getting out of the "defeating the monkey"-position and he took this as an opportunity to introduce us to another principle in Taiji called "san he yi (三和一) - three become one" which actually means that body, mind and soul work as a unity in Taiji, but also that the whole body moves simultaneously (I hope I explained it right) which helped me a lot. I also showed the other girl the parts I knew from the 42 because she asked me for, though I would have been preferred to run the 24 once more... but the lesson was almost over anyway.

Before closing the lesson we did some basic Qigong and the others some breathe techniques. While holding the tree I felt my legs trembling but I managed to concentrate on breathing steadily. I just thought this may lead to severly sore muscles afterwards. We departed with wishes for the new year and somehow I was able to make to the underground. I really felt exhausted after this lesson - 2 hours in total which went by in a fly.

How did I feel during this lesson? Before the start I was pretty relaxed and so during the warm up. During the partner exercises we all had a lot of fun. But when we started to run the forms I got nervous and hyped and it was hard for me to concentrate on the forms at all. Nevertheless I managed to get through them pretty well and and got a lot of "good, good" from our coach. At the end it was hard for me not to hold back tears. This lasted the way home and almost the whole night, which meant I slept really, really bad. I had to drink some calming tea in the morning in order to be able to face the next day at all. And now, while writing this blog - I'm just tired and hope to get to bed soon.

Luckily the sour muscles did not get as bad as expected (the hot shower in the evening really helped a lot).

I'm happy that I joined this lesson because Taiji stopped to be a physical challenge for me for some months now (but still have to learn the 42 before changing the class), though I started in April this year. I think I try to join some of his special classes on Sunday morning (who got this awfull idea?!) to get back this physical challenge and get deeper into Taiji - at latest when I moved to Frankfurt.