A Sense of Place

Whenever I travel I always do Tai Chi. It is my barometer for feeling the energy of a place. I have done Tai Chi in Crop Circles, Stonehenge, Avebury, at the monumental sites of the Southwest, The Great Pyramid, The Temples of China, in the Desert and at the Ocean. There is a sense of place that becomes communicated to me during this process that I cannot feel as fully in any other way.

Another way that this process plays out is when I do Tai Chi repeatedly in the same place. I feel like I soak in that space and get to know it more deeply over time and in turn that place gets imbued with an energy that palpably changes after days or weeks or years.

I used to practice inside mostly. I liked wearing my Tai Chi shoes and moving over a nice flat, smooth hardwood floor. I decided to make a challenge to myself while I took a sabbatical from teaching to practice outside everyday for a year. Starting in Summer I went out every morning to the only level spot in my yard day after day, week after week, month after month. I saw the grass get worn away and turn to hardier clover, the trees get their first shock of color, then turning red and orange and finally losing all their leaves standing bare against the sky.

Winter came and the snow covered the ground, I did Waving Hands Like Clouds for nearly half an hour just to pack down a suitable area for practice. My practice grew from an hour to an hour and a half to two hours. I practiced in rain and hail and blizzards and sub zero weather and the more extreme the weather conditions the more exhilarating the practice. I now hoped for snowstorms the way schoolchildren wanting to skip school do. I no longer made myself practice but looked forward to it and left the practice session reluctantly because I had to get going with my workday. The woodland creatures came to watch my practice. Mice, squirrels, chipmunks, hawks and cardinals frequented this area. As I practiced I would notice a shift toward peripheral vision and the ultraviolet spectrum. I noticed the tracks around me and really took in the way the spot itself was changing.

Spring thaw came and the ice floe I had built up was so thick that it melted weeks later than the surrounding area. As the water had drained out of the soil around this area I was left on a raised platform when the clover returned. I could see that I had changed this place and this place had changed me. Everyone who knew me saw my body change and my Tai Chi change. Nature was my teacher, this place was my teacher and I became more aware of my whole world.

Summer came again. I moved easily across the clover in bare feet taking care not to injure the honeybees that seemed to favor this spot. The butterflies and dragonflies would congregate here especially when I did Sword form, their movements mimicking my swordplay. The deer and fauns preferred Slow Set. The awareness of the understory and spiderwebs, the tracks and distant trees didn’t distract me; it focused me.

Yes, I had heard that the Daoists linked Tai Chi with nature and sought out extreme locations for their practice but now I understood. There is a locus to our movement, to our lives. We have a center, a place to rest or call home. We have a sense of place.