body log

I've been working a lot on getting more stability around my thoracic lumbar transition. The big changes I made some time ago, but the fine tuning has been tricky. I tend towards a bit of an arch there, so I've been working on correcting the arch, and also rolling my shoulders back a little, and bringing the inner bottom edges of my scapula down and in (which more or less means pulling their bottom inner corners towards the same spot I'm un-arching, which is at least a cohesive mental image). This opens my chest - oh, and I'm also trying to avoid activating my pecs, especially pecs minor. Anyhow, while I'm pretty confident of all of the pieces, it hasn't been coming together quite right. I discussed it with my yoga teacher yesterday, explained what I was trying to do, and she thought it was great and had no suggestions.

Today it finally really clicked that I arch my back there to better support my breasts. Whereas, the position that is healthiest for my spine would be effortlessly balanced... if I didn't have breasts. (Or at least had much smaller ones.) *sigh* Anyhow, this is helping me construct a better mental image - my breasts are supported by the proper spine and scapular support. They just sit there, and the muscles directly around them don't do anything. In addition, while the differences are pretty subtle (I hope) changing the positioning of my rib cage and rolling back my shoulders makes them more prominent. Which is silly. And it makes me look skinnier. (Once again, I contemplate surgery. Though as long as I get this worked out I will probably decide not to do it if it's just an aesthetic issue. Still, really, I do not need my secondary gender characteristics to be more emphasized.)

I suspect it's good for me to be doing this much of my forms work on my own, but I'm kind of wishing I could pop over to Seattle to spend the day with Shifu just to show her what I've been up to. All that work on peng ("all the way to the end!") turned into a really different kind of focus in my faster forms work, and somewhere, in amongst learning how to be hard more effectively, I think I've found a new kind of softness. Well, new to me, y'know? I mean, I guess this shouldn't be surprising. But it's interesting.

And I'm halfway through Chen Jian. Which is coming much more easily than I would have expected - I have theoretically held that learning forms from videos can work for advanced folks (I've seen Shifu do this with Zach) but I've never really tried it before. Mind, I suspect Shifu will have a lot to say about my form when I next show up on her doorstep, but mostly it's just like learning any other form. The other day I just fell into whatever sword form my body wanted to do, and there it was. (Okay, so I did learn the form from Chen Laoshi once upon a time. Still.) And it's an awesome form.

Some little voice insists "You know, this changes everything." Which is probably only true on a technicality.