Tai Chi

After a week of blipping about my Tai Chi training I felt I should have at least one picture of the action.
This is our instructor Ulf doing one of the warm-up exercise, drawing the bow. This in turn is part of a group known as the eight brocades.  Janet caught a rather better picture of the action, again of a warm-up exercise. Ulf is a rather good ad for Tai Chi, being in his seventies!
Today was the last day and we meditated and trained for around three hours and spent the rest of the time cleaning the center before leaving.
It was a brilliant week and we were all sorry to be leaving our training and each other. The week had had a real feel of being a retreat with our daily program from 7:30 to 21:00, with the option to start with warm-ups at 06:45. Up early, meditation, good food, concentrated exercise, long days, finishing with supper together before heading of and sleeping well before starting the same round the next day.
The group decided over lunch to book the same week next year and basically do the same course again. That may sound strange but the exercises are both simple and complicated, easy to do but not easy to do really well, and with the right relaxed concentration. We can all do them now but only in a simple way and with a lot of thinking involved. With (hopefully) a year of practice behind us we'll be ready to fine tune things!
So, all things come to an end and then it was the drive back home, arriving a few minutes after the start of the World Cup final. Back to normal life again!