Adam watches Sunita as she lowers herself into the snake-creeps down posture. It’s one of the most difficult moves to perform in the sequence that makes up the standard Beijing 24 Yang form. He knows women half her age who could not even attempt it, and he’s hoping she will not ask him to follow, because his knees are still hurting after this morning’s meditation.
She feels him watching. “You are thinking something Adam. I feel a question in your silence.”
“How can you know that?”
“Because your thoughts are like half bricks hurled into the still pond that is the universe. I feel them from a distance.”
“I’d no idea I was such an unsettling influence.”
“I do not say you are unsettling. Only that you lack the art of stillness. So,… ask your question.”
“I was just wondering, how long before I start to feel the energy in Tai Chi, Sunita?”
She stops now, looks up at him, her stillness broken for a moment. “How long, Adam?”
“It’s just that I’ve been practising for months and I don’t feel anything yet.”
She thinks for a moment, then stands, looks at him directly in the way that always makes him blush.
“Hold your hands in front of you,” she tells him.
“Like this you mean?”
“Yes, that’s good. Now close your eyes and relax.”
Adam closes his eyes and waits for her next command.
“Tell me,” she says. “Without opening your eyes, how do you know your hands are still there?”
“Well,… I can feel them, Sunita.”
“Good. What you feel is energy, Adam. Now move your hands gently. Wave them like clouds in the sky. Can you still feel them?”
“Not so strongly now.”
“No, your mind is thinking of the movement, thinking of controlling it. The mind is happier dealing with little things like that. You must find the stillness in the movement, then you will find the energy again.”
“The stillness in the movement? That makes no sense.”
“A part of you is always still, no matter how fast you are moving. Find him for me, Adam. Listen for him. He whispers to you at that point where one breath ends, and the other begins. ”
Adam seeks the stillness. With eyes closed, he listens for it at the closing of his breath, and slowly finds his hands again, finds the feeling in them, then finds them joined to the feeling in his arms. Then his chest becomes alive at the rhythm of his breath, and then his legs are tingling, alive at their contact with the earth. At first he’s excited by this extraordinary discovery, but then his mind pops up once more, denying the experience, questioning it: “But Sunita, is all of this not just my imagination?”
“Of course it is, Adam,” she replies. “But tell me, what is not imagination?”
The Rivendale Review 
Never underestimate the power of imagination.
Good post.