Taiji Day 96: Right hip

This morning it’s my right hip, not my left, that hurts.  This apparently means that my efforts to unstick my left hip using taiji are working, and that some of the pressure which used to be carried by the muscles on left side has eased… so the right hip is compensating, and consequently getting sore.  Amazing.

If I were going to a doctor about this, the doc would have looked at my right hip, prescribed muscle relaxants and pain medications, and maybe have recommended a little more exercise.  My way, this taiji way, the muscles are not relaxing at all — they’re getting stronger, and doing what they’re supposed to do.

Incidentally, the mala project?  Walk for 20 minutes to improve brain functionality? I did it twice yesterday — once in the middle of the school day when I was feeling loogy and slow, and again between dinner and sitting down to grading schoolwork (the American mythology of the future is going to have the story of the teacher confined to Hell, engaged in the perpetual grading of student papers, like Sisyphus rolling a stone up the hill).   I felt that the work of grading went much more quickly after the second walk, and it helped speed the process of digestion a little bit.

Which reveals a particular truth — I usually get a good clip of writing done in the morning, right after taiji (exercise).  Then at lunchtime, I did another clip of writing work after a walk (exercise).  Then another good clip of work after an evening walk to the river and back (exercise).  Brain function improves with exercise, and it changes one’s energy. What is that energy, anyway, that we’re talking about when we talk about chi or qi? Good question. I’m not sure anyone knows the answer.

One Mala, already broken

I received a mala or string of Buddhist prayer beads at Christmastime.  Being that I’m not really a buddhist, I wasn’t exactly sure how to use them.  There is a prayer that I recite for each day of the week, though, so I built my practice around that.  I used the mala for the last week of December and the first few weeks of January.  Yesterday it broke.  As it did so, it scattered beads around.  I asked a friend what that meant.

She said, “It means you’ve broken through; you’re getting somewhere.  Or it means that your prayers have been released to the universe, and sent to the appropriate destinations.”  (It’s kind of like spam e-mail in that regard, I guess, or an explosive-charge battery — all the power released at once).

Once upon a time, I was a praying man.  Then I stopped.  Now I’ve started again.  Now I don’t know whether to stop or start.  I do know that I feel charged up.  Was it the mala breaking, or was it simply the reconnection with the idea of prayer that matters?  Either way, there’s a sense that I’ve started a new cycle somehow.  The Buddha famously said,

“There are two mistakes on the path to enlightenment: The second is stopping; the first is not starting.”