My first time doing tai chi: ‘It feels like my brain is solving a Rubik’s Cube’
‘Our gentle, low-impact movements only ever take us a step or two away from our starting positions’: Jennifer Wong at her first tai chi class. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian
For the first 15 minutes of my tai chi class, we remain entirely in one spot to warm up. From afar, it probably looks as though we’re standing with our arms by our side and then – in slow motion – lifting them in front of us to 90 degrees. But if you were to look inside my brain, you would see my synapses firing trying to keep up with the instructor’s directions to do things that can’t be seen.
“Form the arches under your feet. Soften your knees, not bending,” says Angela, a tai chi instructor of 28 years. “Visualise the back of your knees. Relax there to relax your knee bones in front.”
I realise I rarely direct thoughts to my knees (there hasn’t been much knee-d to before this), but again, before there’s time to dwell, there’s more to do.
According to Angela, a successful hour of tai chi is an hour with no negative thoughts. “If your mind and body go together,” she says. “That’s all that matters.”
Despite not being a morning person, I begin my lesson with Angela and about 20 others at a Sydney community centre courtyard at 7am. While tennis players run around on courts next door, creating a rhythmic soundtrack of soft thwacks with their rallies, our gentle, low-impact movements only ever take us a step or two away from our starting positions.
“Put your feet parallel, and use your dan tian to hold up your body,” she says.
In tai chi, the dan tian is your qi core. Qi in Chinese means life force, and your qi core is under your naval, inside your stomach.
Although we’ve just become acquainted, I’m going to need to use my dan tian a lot in the next hour. Like now, I’m supposed to feel the weight on my legs and sink my dan tian.
“Elongate your spine to the top of your head. Keep your chin level in a line, close your mouth, teeth gently together, the tip of your tongue goes up, relax your shoulders, elbows, wrists, hands, fingers, and drop your fingers down,” Angela says.
It turns out when you’re rapidly trying to keep up, there really is no time for negative thoughts.
Perhaps the effort of trying to keep up is showing in some of our faces, because Angela mentions if we are frowning and do not relax our face properly, the dan tian won’t relax properly.
“Imagine you smell the flower, you relax your face. You’re expanding your energy out from your ears. Please put this into your daily life,” she says.
We move on to tai chi positions, of which there are 42 in the style that Angela teaches. Today, we will only be doing the first nine. The movements have descriptive names such as holding the bowl (a rather large one), holding the lute (standard-sized lute for adults, by my estimate), grabbing the bird’s tail (species unknown).
Concentrating on making tiny, isolated movements and following instructions such as “Please don’t move your shoulders. Only move your waist” feels like my brain is solving a Rubik’s Cube while my body is solving a Rubik’s Mini Cube.
Near the end of the class, Angela gets us to try the nine movements without her calling out instructions. “New students, look at the people around you,” she says.
I keep my eyes on a woman to my right who has been doing the class with an ease, poise and grace that makes me feel ungainly in comparison (is this a negative thought?). I try to copy her movements. At this point, I lose focus and I am no longer thinking about my dan tian or smelling flowers. This is now a contemporary dance piece and I am the woman’s shadow. A somewhat uncoordinated shadow on delay.
At the end of the lesson, I feel wide awake and alert, despite it still being early at 8am. It’s time for my dan tian to meet another life force: coffee.
North Sydney Community Centre runs tai chi classes at 7am on Mondays. Classes cost $140 for eight weeks.
Jennifer Wong’s new standup show, The Sweet and Sour of Power, is playing at the Sydney comedy festival on 2-4 May and Perth comedy festival on 10 May, then in Brisbane and Canberra.