The Bellows Breath works the core abdominal muscles. It can’t not work those muscles — they’re central to the act of breathing. The act of tightening and releasing them to work the Bellows causes the body’s core to stand a certain way — it straightens the spinal column and ‘compacts’ the body in a sense (it also puts pressure on the intestines —stay near the bathroom!).

So, abdominal core exercises plus oxygen plus spine-straightening… huh. I wonder what could happen when that gets fused with qi gong…?

Oh, right. Chi.

So,the shortform explanation of chi is that it’s life force. That’s a simplistic explanation, but sure… go with it for now because it’s a busy Friday with all the usual Friday goings-on. When one first start s practicing tai chi, it’s easy to feel it. One lives cheek by jowl with it for months, because the channels for it in your body haven’t ever had to open up this much to the energy, and so the sensation is quite electric. Then, as your body stretches its capacity, the channels widen up, and you have to work harder and harder to feel chi moving through your body. And this is disappointing to many practitioners, because the chi-sensation is proof that you’re doing it correctly, right? Except that sensation goes away, and is replaced by …. Ordinary body sensations. Ho hum. Boring. Where did the magical energy sensation inside of me go? What happened?

But that’s just it. Your capacity to move and store energy and project energy hasn’t gone away. It’s just that the channels for that energy have been carved a little wider and a little deeper. you’ve gone from being a faulty wire installed in 1912 by a rogue electrician to a glittering new power cable thicker than a baby’s arm. The trickle charge you could barely handle before is now a broad stream of current. You have to really push yourself to feel the magical sensation of chi in your body, because that sensation is the body accepting in more chi than it currently can handle.

So, yeah… I’ve been triggering more than I can handle, and I felt that today. Even now, half an hour later, I have tingling in my feet and fingers suggesting hat I haven’t shed all I took in. It’s dissipating, but slowly. And I think it’s going to be ok. But this is how one finds new levels of practice, I think — challenge some part of your body to put out more effort than usual, and see how your regular routine is challenged by that search. You wind up working more than just your abs. .

First, of course, you’re going to take three of the cut-out pentagons, and assemble them. As you do so, you’re going to wind up with a structure rather like this — a trio of weird flaps glued together in a weird star formation, like this.  Don’t worry.  It gets better, just not right away.  Once you add in a fourth pentagon, you have something that looks more like a university chorus stage performance, with those odd sound baffles behind the risers so that all the choristers can see the conductor.

You keep adding pentagonal panels to your model, and glue them in place (or use tape, but tape is wonky — use glue.) Gradually, your structure begins to be oddly sphere-shaped, but not sphere-shaped.   And at this point, things begin to get tricky.

See, the template I made has three flaps attached to the sides of the pentagon.  Which is awesome, really.  And most of the time, it’s fine.  But once things reach this point in the construction,  sometimes one of those flaps has to be cut off. But it has to be the right flap.  Which means doing a bit of fitting and second-guessing before it all gets assembled correctly.

So… this is how the pieces look as you’re fitting them together, and figuring out which foldable tabs need to stay attached, and which ones need to be cut off.  As a general rule, only cut one tab off at a time — because they’re hard to re-attached, and relatively easy to leave on until the last minute.  Gluing and fitting the last two or three panels into place is a tricky job… Do the pre-fitting first.

You will get a fairly large dodecagon out of this. It isn’t a small sphere — it’s large enough for some children to throw back and forth as if it were a dodge-ball… though of course it isn’t one of those. Here’s one of them with several common objects alongside to show scale.

And that’s how you build  a dodecahedron big enough to play dodge-ball with.  Of course, there are real mathematical advantages which come from a study of the Platonic solids. They raise questions about area and volume, about points and vertices, and edges and all kinds of mysterious questions which are not easily answerable.  It’s practical usefulness is less clear.  I suppose the inside of this thing could have been taped, and the thing filled with sand as a doorstop… but it would need some rigidity to accomplish that, I think.

But there’s also the benefit of teaching kids to work with sharp tools like scissors or knives, and cut out precise shapes and glue them together. They’re going to want to build clear, obvious and beautiful models… and they can’t do that with those dull, unsharpened scissors with blunted tips. These are not the sort of models that can be assembled slapdash.  There’s an art here…

And that is, that it’s OK to be bored with your tai chi practice for a while.  I am with mine.

I take that back.  I’m not bored with the practice.  I’m bored with writing about the practice.  And that’s a completely different thing.  Maybe.  The thing is, a physical-mental discipline like tai chi is intended to shut down the verbal centers of the brain, or at least render them dormant.  It’s supposed to become difficult to talk about what happens in Tai Chi, because the parts of the brain that know how to talk and write are being gradually trained to quiet down and not talk through the process.  And that makes figuring out what to write about, rather challenging.

Take this morning.  I got up. I did the work.

Let me break that down for you further:  I got up.  I went to the bathroom.  I went to do tai chi.  I got distracted by a small project in balsawood that is designed to replicate the structure, if not quite the function, of a Japanese tool box.   Accordingly I worked on this for almost all the time that I was supposed to be doing the first form.  Ooops.

I stopped working on the box, and I got up and I did the first qi gong form.  So far so good.  Then I realized that my office desk was dirty and I started straightening that out, and putting things away.  Then I realized, wow, I’m running out of time this morning.  Then I did the tai chi form, skipping my second qi gong form because I’d frittered away the time doing the wrong activity.

And it wasn’t until late in the morning that I was able to get back to regular work, and do the second qi gong form.

But explaining all that is ceasing to be interesting to me.  And I think it’s ceasing to be interesting to all of you.  So I’m saying, I think it’s OK that the story of the work is boring — it often is.  The question is, can the work teach you to be exciting and interesting in other areas and other ways?  And if the answer is yes, then maybe it’s OK to be boring, and to focus on the areas of your life which are arousing your excitement and interest.

Just remember that the boring bits have to be there too, from time to time.

Once routines are set, it’s awfully hard to adjust them, particularly when it comes to daily practice.  I imagine it would take me almost as long to re-adjust my schedule, as it took to adjust it in the first place.

I started another painting, having finished “Black Pillar” and”White Pillar” last night. Scott and I were chat ting via Facebook occasionally, as I put some layers of shiny satin glaze over parts of both paintings. They look pretty cool, if I say so myself. Maybe I should have an art exhibit? Perhaps not yet.

But it meant that tai chi seemed like a luxury I could not afford this morning. I woke, and hit the snooze button on the alarm clock far too many times. When I finally did get up to do tai chi, it was rushed, rather than leisurely. And yet, now that it’s done, I realize (for today) that it’s not a luxury but a necessity.

I’m almost done with this second painting in the “black pillar” and “white pillar” series. I’ve put a coat of varnish on the inside/right side of the painting, so it will have a bit of a sheen or glimmer to it. I plan to do the same to the “White Pillar” too. I still haven’t decided if either painting needs any texts around time. My original thought was no, now I’m leaning toward “yes”, which means picking those texts and a contrasting color to paint them in.

I was up late working on this painting, titled “Black Pillar”, and I think it’s coming along nicely. My morning tai chi routine was lackadaisical as a result: one qigong form done, then a bit of a walk around the apartment, then the other qigong form, then a bit of cleanup in the kitchen, then the tai chi form. There may have been some cleanup of the art supplies and drafting desk, too, although more remains to be done to clean up this house after the last few weeks of crazy. A lot of it will get done this week… Probably once the painting is finished.

I’m conscious that in the two months since my tai chi practice passed the year mark, that it’s been less and less interesting to me. Don’t get me wrong: it’s still hard to get up and do the work; it’s still hard to convince myself that I should do it. The Dweller on the Threshold still gets me front time to time, and I delay getting up and getting started. But sooner or later, I get up and out of bed, and I go do the tai chi.

But the actual tai chi is less interesting. There are fewer complications, and fewer barriers to success. There are times when I forget my place in the form, or I have to do a sequence over again — but I find that there are few parts of the work that cause strain or physical challenge. Which is sort of the point. I want to experience fewer physical challenges as I get older, and I want to remain flexible and mentally alert. And I’m getting those benefits. But there’s less to say about the work itself. And I wonder if that will continue to be the case, or if I’m only on a current plateau in my practice. Or if there’s a third option? Again, I don’t know.

So, when I awoke officially, I didn’t dare go back to sleep. I might have missed my workshop. I drove down early (so I wouldn’t get lost) and did my tai chi at the workshop site.

I’ve been badly affected the last few days by the pollen counts. I never get seasonal allergies — or at least, not until now. Argh. The last few days I’ve been a snot machine. And it’s not been pleasant. Nothing has really worked to keep my breathing passages open.

Today though was finally better. Things eased up a bit as I did tai chi in the garden at the workshop site. And now that I’ve had a nap and some food, post-workshop, I think that maybe my allergenic reaction is finally slowing down. Thank goodness.

Vine: Video of the Tree of Life

Update: Apparently you have to go to Vine’s website to view it, because I can’t embed it on a WordPress site.  Alas.  Enjoy anyway.