Good Tuesday
Tuesday was a pretty good day. It warmed up and I stopped feeling cold all the time. My aches and pains subsided quite a bit too. A friend I’ve not seen in a long time came to visit. I even allowed her into the house because I knew she wouldn’t judge me by my house like some people would. We had a really good chat then went off to Sushi Master for lunch. As it turns out they have half price main meals on Tuesdays so we splurged and had bento box meals and they were quite good. We were both full by the time we left and neither of us finished our food. By this time it was late afternoon so my friend left before peak hour traffic became too bad. So far so good…
In the evening, the Scientist and I got to finally join the advanced tai chi class. After last term ended and I’d finished my level six moves, I was quite excited about this. A few days before the class I got a bit nervous about it. In the beginner class, we had warm up exercises, work on an 18 move set called shibashi, and walking practice before going into the week’s lessons. In the advanced class we’ve already learned all the moves in the tai chi set so I didn’t know what to expect during the lesson part.
We left early that night to get a bite to eat before class. As I was still full from lunch, I skipped dinner and just had a gelato for dessert. We still had almost two hours to kill for before class so we went to a nearby shopping centre and wandered around a bit, bought a couple things from the grocery store and then exhausted that location. Most of the stores closed before we got there so it was like walking in an empty mall most of the time. We moved on to the actual venue and arrived about an hour before class time. Rain had begun to fall at some point and started getting quite heavy about the time we parked there. There’s a yoga class that meets before this class so we sat in the car in the rain and watched a bit of what was happening there until it was too difficult to see much.
We finally went inside about fifteen minutes before class and got settled in. We became reacquainted with a few people we’d not seen for a while and finally the class started. It started much the same as beginner class with a warm up. Then we started working on the second version of the shiboshi. This was a really nice set of moves, much better than those in the first set. And those are quite nice on their own. But these are more involved and move your body much more which added to the experience. Afterwards we all worked through the entire tai chi set and I managed to stay pretty close to the right moves throughout. Funnily enough I had a bit of a blip during the level five moves, which were the ones I found easiest to learn. I think I just lost concentration and that threw me off a bit. I have been practicing more these days and it definitely is showing through. The rest of the class was focused on breathing, which is the special topic for this term. This has been the area I’ve had trouble with along the way due to just trying to learn all the moves. It seems to be an ideal focus for me this term anyway. Afterwards it was the end of class and we finished with the usual lotus set of moves to finish off.
I was nervous for no good reason because it was all even better than I was expecting it to be. Next week we will forgo the eating out part and just leave a lot later in the evening. I’m looking forward to the future lessons.
