Thursday, 22 December 2011

Left Side

After we had finished the right side long form, John Kells taught us the mirror image form or left side.

At first this felt really strange. But after a while it felt more natural than the right side form. Some say you shouldn't do a left side or mirrror image form as it will make you Ch'i run backwards and you will die. I've never heard such a complete load of rubbish! Perhaps we should only walk leading with the right foot at all times.

I guess we all instinctively favour a particular side but working on the left side helps to develop your understanding of T'ai Chi principles further and  achieve a certain balance. This is my personal opinion. I'm sure practitioners with more experience than I can shed some light on working both sides of the body/brain.

The left side taught by John was also interesting in that it contained postures and variations not in the right side. Stupidly I never asked why. The idea was that we would put them into our right side form, which I did.

Anyone have any thoughts/comments on doing a mirror image form?

1 comment:

  1. When I first learnt the left side with John I found it quite challenging to do alone. A few years later I had a lengthy period of unemployment and worked on it. At first I did two lefts to one right until it felt natural to do either. Now I do them alternate days unless I have the time to do both together. The benefits I found were as follows:- Increases ambidexterity. Reduces tendency to favour one side when dealing with an attack. Increases general fluidity of response to incoming attack. Amazing what you can find yourself doing with your left hand! (feels less like a stranger with practice! :-) )

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