Balance...

I'm not athletic. I don't have great aim. I'm not overly graceful. Balance is sometimes an issue and don't even get me started on flexibility. I am built for comfort, not for speed. In fact if it weren't for a family history of weight related health issues and touch of psychosis I would never ever work out.

Meditation has been a bust for me. The guided. The seated. The first thing in the morning centering before your day. The last thing at night quieting your monkey brain. It doesn't work for me. Walking meditation does a little. But then I get distracted or inspired and my brain is off and running again.

Last year when we went to Hawaii we could see the beach from our lanai. Every morning there were a few people (not sure if they were the same people every day or different people each time) doing Tai Chi on the beach. Moving with the tide. It was lovely and peaceful just to watch. During the summer you can find groups doing it in parks all over the city. I've always been fascinated by it.

So tie those things together and it's my latest new exercise. I'm going to try to learn Tai Chi. I looked online for classes and decided that wasn't really going to work. I would be too self conscious to take it with a group. But while I was looking for that I found a DVD that was highly recommended for beginners. It breaks the routine up in to very small, easy to learn parts. You work your way through all of them and before you know it you are doing the full routine, gracefully, magically, moving meditation... sigh.....

So today was the first day for me. I watched all of the things it said to watch first. I did the warm up that they suggest you do and then started part 1A. Thinking to myself, well there are 4 parts with two subparts each and then part 5 is the full thing. So maybe a section a week? Doing the full routine by February? Yeah, that totally seems doable.

Or seemed doable.

Have I mentioned I'm not athletic? Or graceful?

Also the video isn't flipped. So you aren't mirroring the instructor. When he says move your left hand he is moving his left hand, not his right so you have to flip in your head what you are doing, not mirror what he is doing. This kicked my ass. I'm watching and moving and trying to decide if I am parting the horse's mane with my left hand going up or my right? And which foot is leading again? Oh...and now we are going back to the beginning and I don't even remember what we did to start. Crap....

So maybe not February. Maybe a little longer than that.

I'm just looking forward to the first time I can get through the first three poses without ending my workout saying out loud, "Well I have no fucking idea what I'm doing."

Though maybe that's the meditation part. The realization that we are all just trying our best but often have no fucking idea what we are doing...

ohmmmm.....