Tai chi practice notes (1)
Editor’s note: These notes were collected between a few months and few weeks ago, when I was still primarily practicing zhan zhuang. The title is foreshadowing, I suppose, for when I eventually clear the cache.
I did my first 40 minute sit1 a few weeks ago! This was about 2.5 months into my zz practice.
I’ve been noticing that different tissues get stretched during zz as my practice has progressed. At first, it was exclusively the external rotators of the shoulders and the tissues around the ribs. Later, it was mostly the shoulders and the back of the neck. Recently, deeper tissues have started to get stretched — some tissues of the neck, around the larynx, and in some tissues behind my sternum.
Interestingly, this sequence of moving from superficial tissues to deep tissues mirrors the approach taken in some modes of bodywork (tweet). Also, the deeper tissues seem to correspond to Myer’s concept of the deep front line (video video), which suggests that longterm zz practice could improve deep tissue quality.
It’s not all deep work at this point for me — I do still feel stretched in the shoulders, the back of the neck, and other superficial tissues.My posture has improved dramatically, but reverts back to its previous state very quickly. After as few as two days away from zz, I notice that maintaining a stacked posture (in the Ida Rolf sense) requires much more attention. It’s unclear whether I’m fully back to my previous posture within two days or it’s just that my sensitivity to poor alignment has increased.
My breathing is much less vigorous than when I started, and becomes quite shallow.
When mouth taping was popular, one test that was promoted for measuring carbon dioxide tolerance was to measure the amount of time that elapses while holding the breath before the nose involuntarily twitches. I didn’t find any trustworthy sources for this information, but the claim was that the nose twitch is a reflex that happens when blood CO2 becomes higher than you can comfortably tolerate, and is supposed to be a metric that (1) occurs at a safe threshold and (2) isn’t sensitive to willpower / willingness to do self-harm. I’ve noticed that I often experience a nose twitch while sitting, after about 10 minutes.
I’ve only sat for longer than 30 minutes a few times, and zz between the 30 and 40 minute marks feels very different than zz between the 10 and 20 minute marks.
Readers may be familiar with trauma-releasing exercises (video), in which trauma is purportedly released through some convulsions. I’ve found myself experiencing TRE-style shaking and stretching during extended zz, especially intense after the 30 minute mark. I figure this is okay (or good).
40 minute sits seem to be substantially (i.e. non-linearly) more effective at remodeling tissue. But they’re quite challenging physically and leave me fatigued and for a few days after completion. I’d like to work up to be able to tolerate more frequent long sits.
At some point, I thought that I might develop a theory of modes of organization in zz.
What I mean is, in zz the body has to meet some postural demands, staying upright and counteracting the torque exerted around the torso from the placement of the arms. This can be done in many ways, flexing different muscles to maintain the position of the legs relative to the hips, the curvature of the spine, and the position of the shoulders and arms. To keep the hips level, it’s possible to move tension into the adductors, which can keep the legs extended and pull the hips into neutral while releasing tension from the abdomen. The relaxation of the abdomen seems to shift some of the burden of stabilizing the scapulae from the muscles of the back to the serratus anterior, I think because the back muscles no are no longer opposed by the rectus abdominus and so can’t contract very hard without shifting the posture. I’m thinking of this pattern of postural oranization, starting from the engagement of the adductors, as one “normal mode”.
I thought I might be able to interrogate these patterns and decompose the act of standing into normal modes, in the same way that colors are decomposed into RGB or vibrating strings into superpositions of sinusoids, decompose standing into, maybe, adductor-dominant, quad-dominant, and hamstring-dominant modes. I haven’t succeeded yet.
I once bought a whole goose at the grocery store, and stuffed inside it with the offal was its neck. It’s a strange object, long and sinewy, muscles tightly packed in their fascial wrapping, fascia precisely machined to thread through the vertebra, vertebra seamlessly articulating as it bends.
I’ve been thinking a lot about that neck.
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