September 1988

Breathing in Shooting Tiger: focus on breathing out as you plant your heel each time and let the rest develop naturally from there, don't force it unnaturally.

Adjusting your feet is fine, what she objects to is sliding or shuffling across the floor. Indeed, adjusting the position of the feet once they have landed is very necessary in changing between many of the forms. Just make sure you do it with the heel on the ground, otherwise you weaken your lower back. And do it when your weight is on the other foot, for example adjust the rear foot when your weight is forward, and so on.

The good internal qualities of Tai Ji are: continuity, inner awareness, and gracefulness. It is like a beautiful person who just is so, and is not aware of it; as soon as they start looking in a mirror and thinking they are beautiful, they stop being beautiful. This is something not many of her students achieve, even if they think they have the physical forms and techniques right. And this is the core of the whole thing in the internal martial arts. The fact that many of her best students are very highly educated is not because she is snobbish, but because that mental ability and training seems to equip them for the internal martial arts. Also, brainworkers need these arts and can benefit so much from them: calming and focusing the mind, circulating qi and blood through the head. There is also massage which is very good for this, which she would like to show us some time.

Where I could still improve is on the physical side, especially as regards stretching in full, and this especially in the legs, going down lower. The more effort you put in, the more you will get out of it. The more you can stretch now, the more room you will have for the inevitable shrinking when you get old!