the look
just back from a week long tai chi retreat. woke up at 5.30am and trained till 10pm+ every day. did about 60 hours of practise total.
something unbelievable happened about 5 days in.
it was a small group of 35ish ppl so we all got a chance to work with the same ppl a good bit.
we did a lot of sensitivity training where we pushed against each other to test postures.
there was one guy i trained with. very friendly, great teacher. told me he's been doing it for 20 years.
he looked mid to late 30s but he turned out to be almost 50 and has 3 teenaged kids.
anyway on the fifth day of training, he stood in a neutral shoulder width stance, put out his right arm, his palm facing himself and told me to push into his forearm.
i obliged. he stared at me and slowly pushed me back. i didn't feel any movement in his body. cool, not too crazy.
not too crazy because there are a lot of ways of pushing back in tai chi. you can weight shift or tuck your hips to create movement forward. you can usually feel them if you are sensitive but i felt nothing. i've been told i'm quite sensitive but thought i just couldn't detect it.
here's where it becomes unbelievable. he then put his arm down so now there was no physical connection between us. we were just standing in front of each other. he stared at me and i slowly moved back. it felt like something was pushing at my upper legs. it wasn't forceful.
i couldn't believe it. maybe i just moved back from his eyes since his stare was so piercing.
i asked for him to do it again. and he did it maybe 5 or 6 times before i realised it wasn't just a fluke.
throughout the rest of the night, while chatting in a group he'd give me the look.
and i kept moving back. it was so wild.
there's this thing called "intent" in tai chi where you have to focus your energy out for stuff to work. without doing it, it simply doesn't work.
i didn't realise it could be so strong, it can move people without touching them.
i asked my teacher how this is possible and he just laughed. i asked how to stop it and he laughed again and told me to not look in his eyes anymore.
written 26th october 2024