Making room...

There is a movement in Tai Chi called ‘playing the Lute’ and if you go to online to see how the movement looks you’ll be greeted with a 100 different ways.

In essence if you imagine you’re standing up with your hands out in front of you, palms facing each other and body width apart, slightly raised so the left arm will be stretched out (though slightly bent) and in line with your eyes or forehead and the right arm will be slightly shorter, parallel to the left arms elbow and at the same height as your heart.

I’m not trying to teach this to you or expecting you to carry out the exercise. The point of the technique is that the left hand comes backwards and right arm goes forward at the same time so they swap positions and so on and so on.

It’s a whole body exercise meaning the shoulders are bringing one arm backwards and the other forwards and the legs and hips are working too so everything is flowing and in sync.

To look at, it’s quite beautiful and to do it is relaxing. As an application it’s a technique that can be defensive, attacking or used simply to aid co-ordination and bring calm and focus.

When done correctly the backwards/forwards / up/down movement is carried out within its own space and not much room is required. This is what struck me when watching and carrying it out – how much can be achieved in so little space. There are times we may feel we require lots of room or time and sometimes this may well be appropriate and necessary however other times we could achieve something great without the space or time we may ordinarily want, have or even think we need.

Play around with that thought and perhaps check in with yourself some of the decisions you’ve made with restrictive thought/time and others where you may have spent eons contemplating.