Connection, Alignment and the Six Harmonies

Today's Kao Shi class was my first class back on the mats.

I'm so glad to say that it went really well. Better than I had anticipated, in fact.  I still went slow and deliberate with most everything, but I was able to participate in the majority of the lesson.

A couple things in particular stood out for me.

First was when we were working on our thrust punches from horse stance.  The goal was to ensure that our hips and core were engaging with the same release and rotation as the upper body.  For the first round, I held back.  I was worried about my back.  More specifically, I was worried about engaging those muscles too much and setting myself back again.  So instead of letting the movement happen naturally, I consciously resisted it.

What I found interesting was that this was the round where I felt the most strain.  The pressure wasn't coming from the movement itself.  It was coming from my attempt to prevent the movement.  In the following rounds I stopped trying to control everything and simply allowed my body to do what it wanted to do.  The hips rotated.  The core engaged.  And everything worked together.

The second was when we were doing our forms work.  I was being very deliberate about my alignment.  Any reaching or leaning is still painful.  Those are the movements that continue to remind me that my back isn't quite ready yet.  So throughout the class, I paid close attention to settling over my hips and maintaining my structure.  I found that my movements felt really good and I was able to avoid any of the pressure and pain that I've been anticipating.

At first, these felt like two separate lessons.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized they were really the same.

The body functions best when everything is connected and working together. When one part stops participating, another part is forced to compensate. When we become misaligned, sacrificing our structure, other parts have to pick up the slack.  Whenever something becomes disconnected, we run into problems.

Today was the first time in quite a while that I was able to feel that lesson rather than simply understand it intellectually.

And after several months of injuries, modifications, setbacks, and frustrations, it felt really good to leave class not just feeling better, but feeling like I was learning again.