In this morning's practice I noticed something new that had been outside of my awareness.
As I have posted before, my legs feel different to each other, with the left leg feeling less 'connected' and less 'supportive' than my right.
I began to wonder that maybe my right leg was more connected due me preferentially using it as weight bearing and maybe I was standing more on one leg than the other but not noticing it.
I got a training stick laid it on the front of my breastbone and started going through my routine. After about a minute i felt movement under the stick as I made a subtle shift rightwards to use my preferred leg. After a few of these shifts had happened I got a sense of a kind of twist happening in the pelvis before the shift so I dispensed with the stick and watched out for the pelvis movement.
I spent the session either correcting this shift or inhibiting it and found than my left knee gradually loosened allowing my leg to find a better connection to the ground. And following from that I found after a while that with each small ‘release’ of the leg my breath would flow easier and more fully and my body felt more at ease. I must have been standing like that for years both in everyday but also in preparation pose tai chi standing practce.
Other things.
Sifu Kelley talks about the issues around suspending the crown in some videos and I am really beginning to notice the effects of years of suspending the crown. I now see it as artificial and anti-developmental in that it prevents the body being properly supported from the ground up. I try to say no to it whenever I catch it habitually happening and I think my rib cage is beginning to drop as an effect, I am getting stabbing pains in the intercostals in lower ribs and behind my shoulder blades. I've never injured those areas so i pretty sure they are just a sign of things moving and will pass.