CHAPTER 33: Tuesdays With Shifu
December 29, 2012
It has been a while since I
last journaled about my experiences on the path to enlightenment, for which I
apologize to you, dear readers. The
health crisis I suffered in September continues still, with a series of consecutive,
on-going respiratory bugs that morph from one culture to the next, becoming
bugs I’ve never even heard of before. Since
September I have been unable to attend “regular” Shaolin classes, as my
autoimmune system is “too compromised” to withstand the exposure. For the better part of four months, all of
my ‘social contact’ has been in a doctor’s office or infusion center, with one
exception…my medical Tai Gong/Qi Gong sessions with Shifu.
Once a week I go to Shaolin
Institute where Shifu teaches me meditation and the healing form of Tai Chi
known as Qi Gong. As an Asian medical
scholar and martial arts Master, Shifu has developed his own form of Qi Gong
called Tai Gong. He has treated many
critically ill patients using Tai Gong and has a record of extraordinary
success, restoring health and quality of life to those who were given a death
sentence. Like them, Tai Gong has made
all the difference in the world for me.
Perhaps the most debilitating
part of critical illness is the overwhelming sense of having no control. And in the midst of this paralysis, what
people need most, constructive social interaction, a sense of purpose,
to feel useful; these are the first things “taken away”. Challenges make us stronger, they teach us
lessons about ourselves that we would likely never learn otherwise, but in the
long-term they are exhausting. Hope for a complete recovery is hard to hold
onto, especially when improvement is so slow in coming. The only thing slower to improve than my
health, are my Tai Chi/Tai Gong skills.
One would think that with so much
practice and individual attention, I must be an expert Chi’er by now? To that I would say, “Do not underestimate my
muscle amnesia.” Three weeks ago Shifu
spent an hour teaching me a Tai Gong routine, repeating it over at least three
times before turning to me and saying, “Show me what you remember.” I went from being totally relaxed to a state
of hyper-panic before he had even finished saying, “remember”! Not only was I suffering from Prednisone
brain mush, but I had not paid the least bit of attention to memorizing the
order of the movements because he’d never said that before and I was wholly
engaged in quieting my mind and feeling the Chi.
When I am tapering down my
Prednisone dose, my brain goes through a stage of mush. I can’t remember the simplest things. I can’t read because I won’t remember what I
read from sentence to sentence. My family tells me about conversations we’ve
had that I have absolutely no recollection of.
I am unable to multi-task. I have
to write everything down in order to remember it. I call it being “brain dead”. This was
one of those times.
I let out a nervous giggle, while hoping Shifu
would recognize the expression of horror on my face, but he didn’t; he was
serious. My son Blake tells me I’m not
as bad at Tai Chi as I think I am; I just have “performance anxiety.” Well, this time I had “performance paralysis.
“ I did the opening movement and my mind
was completely blank. Shifu fed me the
next move. I performed it, but again, I
was blank! So, ever the patient Master,
Shifu said, “follow me”. To which I
breathed a huge sigh of relief. But I
knew he wasn’t going to let me off that easy.
Now I was intensely focused on trying to remember each movement and it’s
order within the routine, which made me even more clumsy and rigid than usual,
substantiating my ability to take something beautiful, when executed properly, and
turn it into an ostrich dance.
“Ok,” Shifu said, after
completing the program with me, “now, show me what you remember.” To be honest, I don’t remember how bad I
actually was that time. I think I have blocked it out of my mind because I tend
to do that with horrifyingly embarrassing moments. I only remember him patiently feeding me the
next movements, one after the next until, I think, he took over and I followed
along?
When that session was over I
had learned a painful but valuable lesson…something is expected of me. There will be quizzes. There will be tests. I will be expected to demonstrate what I have
been taught. I will be expected to
progress, and if he has to, Shifu will push me up that hill like Sisyphus
pushing the rock. I knew then that it
was no longer acceptable to show up for my Chi session and just follow
along. It was no longer enough to fumble
my way through new routines and movements, then go home and practice something
completely different, like the Tai Chi warm-up, which I could follow on DVD. I think it was only then that I truly realized
that I must meet this challenge head on, teaching my mind and body to work in
tandem to dance the dance. I made a
commitment to myself before I left the studio that day that there could be no
more excuses. I committed to myself to practice,
practice, practice, and practice some more.
It is only through repeated practice that a muscle memory challenged
individual like myself, or a person with any kind of physical disability, can conquer
it and the “performance anxiety” that comes with it.
I have been blessed richly by
the privilege of Tai Gong classes with Shifu.
If your outside social contact is ever limited, the one person you want
at the top of the short list is Shifu. I
am so grateful for his dedication to my success.
