Day 5 was very enjoyable, Days 4 and 5 crucial, I feel. I really like Sonny's insistence on getting the core balance and movements right from the get-go: I mean "core" as in "at the heart of the practice" and "core" as in "body core"! In particular the relationship between the hips/waist and the body below through to grounded/ungrounded feet, and the body above, back, torso, arms, head. Moreover, the way "core" waist turning grounding/ungrounding relates to advance, retreat, turn left, turn right, and more still how the turn in the waist slightly precedes a turn. This DOES NOT come naturally to me, and seems forced when abstracted from wider movements, but it does fall in place when combined with Tiger Washes Face, Cloud Hands, etc. I really get now how trying to rush to big, expressive whole body movements (which look and feel very good to do) are probably all show and no go unless you have mastered these core basics. Certainly if you wanted either to practice Tai Chi as a martial art, or practice it for health and wellbeing in a way embedded in its martial arts roots (and therefore get the best out of it for body, mind, soul, and spirit). That said, I need regular practice here, and intend to practice Days 4 and 5 once or twice a week as part of my routine. Going back into post at the end REALLY worked for me, BTW! 🏯

Right, so Day 6 built well on Day 5, which in turn built well on Day 4. I think over the coming weeks I'm going to repeat those in sequence a few times as the transition from QJ to TC was very skilfully delivered by Sonny, as I said above with a powerful emphasis on the fundamentals. The timings of the Grounding Breaths and Post were very well done, and I could really feel the benefit of them. The outro with shaking and tapping was great, and my body felt very good in the last Post. In the middle of practicing, I was reminded of motorcycle sport (I still ride 50 years after I started, but nowadays just for fun). In Road Racing you are in a racing crouch, in MX and Enduro you generally stand with your body a bit like Horse, or actually a combination of Horse and Post, in fact it was Sonny mentioning "when you're riding a horse" that reminded me of it. A motorcycle defies gravity by the gyroscopic force of the rotating wheels, you steer it by shifting your body weight: all skilled riders know that this is best done from The Centre, in Tai Chi the Yao; this really is the difference between a skilled rider and someone who just messes about on motorcycles. In the slowest competitive sport, Trials, speed is not important as it is scored on points (putting a foot down is a minus point, two feet down two minus points, falling off is three), forward progress is often sub-walking pace, so there is minimal gyroscopic help from the wheels and control of the hands, arms, feet and legs from The Centre (Yao) is literally everything. Even Road Racers who go well over 200 mph on track these days often practice Trials to practice balance, while in Road Racing your butt becomes almost a sensory organ sensing lean angle of the bike relative to body angles (often asymmetric as you tend to spread yourself all over a race bike with weight and limbs positioned relative to lean. Pardon my digression, but that magic phrase "when you're riding a horse" opened up a whole heap of connections between sports not often considered connected! (I have ridden actual flesh and blood horses before, but generally my experiences has been on the steel variety (these days actually lightweight alloy, carbon fibre, and plastic)! Aged 66 I've not ridden competitively for 35 years, and in the course of that I sustained some serious joint and long bone injuries that have come back to haunt me in senior age as osteoarthritis! My practice here is massively helping that! Helping beyond my best expectations, actually.

@Kirby Mannon I liked the way you suddenly sped up during the Tai Chi circle practice video! Quick question, for a nube in his 60s, how often in a week should I take recovery days? (Retied with time on my hands I tend to repeat practice sessions quite a bit, so I end up doing 2+ hours most days) What should practice look like on a "quiet" day?

@Kirby Mannon Thanks Sonny, that's really interesting. I need to reflect on the differences between active and passive rest. I suspect that properly thought through and translated into practice it is one of those fundamental things (like breathing!) that can hugely enhance practice, and indeed life in general.

I'm focusing very much on Qi Gong at the moment (the Challenge supplemented with some of other of Sonny's videos, and the twice a week Qi sessions), as it seems essential preparation for Tai Chi, and a practice to make part of my regular, daily life. That said, Day 4 of the Challenge was a very neat transition from QG to TC. THANK YOU SONNY! I especially like how it starts from a standing stance, very much like QG, a very neat transition. That is also very valuable as rather than obsessing over forms it goes to the very basics of stance, balance, and building organically connected strength in feet, knees, waist, middle, torso, head: the absolute basic elements that are so, so often neglected, passed over, or not given the centrality they deserve in many other approaches to TC. That said, I'm eager to get on with TC Walking, basics at first. Any advice on how to to that much appreciated. I also do a little bit of "freestyle" TC, but aimed more at very gentle flow and meditation in motion rather than physical culture (although of course the two connect and mutually reinforce). I also attend a local TC class: the main value of it is that it's a local (Seaford, Sussex, on the English Channel seaside) connection to practice: Rooted Academy is undoubtedly superior in every respect, and the local class seems to be pulling in a different direction. I might drop it and focus entirely on RA for instruction, although as I said the local connection has it's value. I need to think that potential contradiction/contraindication through. So at the moment I'd say about: 70% QG, perhaps tapering to 60% as the Challenge engages with TC in parallel with QG; about 20% TC but likely to go up as I engage more with leg word in the coming months; about 10% "freestyle" and the class. I'm also doing some refresher and new reading on Daoist thought and philosophy.

@Kirby Mannon ☯️

Excellent and very useful. Breathing exercises are of course common to techniques for controlling anxiety, mindfulness and well-being practices, different types of meditation, other physical practices such as Yoga, many sports: well over forty years ago in motorcycle sport I'd often be content to observe from towards the back of the pack for around the first third of a race, observing the riding techniques of my opponents, their level of skill, their tendency to rashness. Part of this involved what I called "settling in" -- there's no shame in being around the back of a pack if you have a plan: settling in (while travelling extremely fast!) involved a slow lick of the lips, and after the initial adrenaline rush of the start switching to slow, deep rhythmic breathing. You don't have time to "observe" others with your rational mind -- things are happening to fast -- rather, your observation is instinctive, almost passive, you let the information flow in: a misjudge gear change, something not quite right in a corner, a gesture of frustration or anger, can reveal your opponents' hamartia, their (hopefully not literally!) "fatal flaw". Of course you win some and lose some, being resigned to that kept me from the elite level of the sport. And sometimes you crash, I hurt myself quite badly a few times back then.

@Wade t Parrish Absolutely, absolutely. There are some oustanding natural beauty spots just inside a national park near where I live. At present, too much precipitation: I can't wait to have gotten the skills to do that naturally outside. My only caveat is that I am wary, unsupervised, of learning through muscle memory bad habits, poor technique, counter-productive short cuts, etc. So my aim is to follow a Master > Disciple discipline, if that's the best word for it (probably not!), while being confident to (again perhaps not the best words) free style, go off piste, improvise. I guess it is a matter of practice: I want to flow freely; but equally I don't, a freshman (or maybe sophomore) here and not at all a Dr (well I am but of Philosophy, not the mastery of Qi!), want get ahead of myself in a counterproductive, indeed arrogant, way. Running before I've learnt to walk. I think focusing primarily of Qi Jong might be the WTG here, as I have for a few weeks (before joining RA, but following Sonny's videos on YouTube).

@Kirby Mannon This is welcome advice, along the lines I was thinking, but confirmatory, and with greater nuance than my original thoughts. Starting out, expert confirmation (or otherwise) of the way one sees the Way is crucial. Thanks. That said: Friday morning I went to my local mixed ability Tai Chi class (Wu Dang), and the teacher said, quite abruptly I thought "You seem to have been doing your own thing (I wasn't aware I was!) today . . . next time, leave it at the door". I thought that was unnecessary, as if I did improvise it was unintentionally, I'm pretty sure I was following him quite closely. But then, maybe I was getting ahead of myself; I need to reflect on that, as my initial reaction was not to go again, but maybe I should learn something from that. The class is a local connection to practice. As you said, "You may very well get different answers from different teachers depending on their own lineage and style"!