Practice at the hall tonight felt special. This past week, I’ve been diving back into aerobic work—hiking, swimming, cycling, getting the heart pumping and the morning air on my face. And yes, I’ll admit, my daily movement practice took a bit of a backseat. But I was out there doing other things, so it balanced out.
I started with my usual thirty-minute warm-up: walking and breathing, lunging, ostrich movements, finding ways to drop to the ground and rise again. Then I slowed it down with some light Qigong, just enough to open the hips and imagine rolling on the ground while standing tall. And then, finally, I took it to the floor.
For the first ten minutes, I let my body lead. It was tight, no surprise, really, after all that swimming. (Still working on mastering it, even after all these years.) I rolled through child’s pose, stretched out the wrists and shoulders, twisted into pretzel spine, and played with plow and rolly-polley. Everything was slow, tied to the breath. My flow felt a little off at first, coordination not quite there, but that tightness? It was just part of the process.
Next, I expanded the practice. The floor became this big, open space, and I stretched toward its edges with my hands and feet, letting that intention pull the rest of me along. Three-pointed bridges, leg threads, panther crawls, monkey movements, all of it. The last ten minutes were pure play: A-frames, bear crawls, monkey squats, transitions into three-pointed bridges and back again. I focused on how the movements opened my joints and where my breath hitched when things got tight.
To close, I stood upright for a couple of minutes, just to reconnect with being on two feet.
It was a good, deep session, more creative than formulaic. And here’s the thing: that stiffness, that restriction? It forced me to let my body figure things out on its own. No right or wrong. Just exploration.