Day 2000 of my Tai Chi Gong

On December 4th, 2006 while completing HLC 2 in Vista California at the CHEK Institute, Paul Chek challenged us to a Tai Chi Gong.  Which meant doing a specific Tai Chi movement for at least 10 minutes with a Tai Chi Ruler for 100 consecutive days.  He warned us to only accept the challenge if we were serious about it, at which point, he would seal our commitment  by signing and dating our Tai Chi Rulers.  It took me a bit to convince myself through some self talk but decided to accept it.  He then signed and dated my Tai Chi ruler and the challenge was on!

I was really curious whether I could make it to 100 consecutive days.  The rules were, if you missed a day, you’d start all over from day 1, even if you completed 99 days up to that point.  Well, according to the trusty date to date calculator on timeanddate.com, today marks day 2000 since the first day of the challenge and at 6:16am this morning, I completed my 2000th consecutive daily Tai Chi Ruler active meditation.

A few friends coaxed me to make an announcement of it and celebrate it (oh and I so easily give into peer pressure, as those of you who know me well will attest to how sarcastic that statement is.)  But this time I gave in so here it is.  I did it!

I learned quite a bit about myself through these 2000 days (or 5 years, 5 moths and 22 days for a different perspective.)  Whether I had discipline and resolve to begin with or built them through this process is up for debate.  I do want to thank Paul for introducing me to such a cool and easy way to get into a meditative state consistently.

I calmed down mentally, emotionally and in general.  I take things a lot lighter now and have a much broader perspective on things.

I am more aware of pretty much everything around me.  I can feel myself get triggered and shift it before I make a mountain out of a mole hill.  I can also take the cues from my intuition a lot easier than I was able to beforehand.  I often find myself making decisions without knowing why but they ended up being a great choice.  (like on a warm sunny day before going into a store, I decided to fully roll up my windows on a whim – rather than leave them open a tad for the circulation like I normally would – then, when I came out there was a torrential downpour out of nothing.)

I learned to connect with my breath and can now breathe MUCH deeper, slower and easier.

With clients, somehow, I just know the right questions to ask at the right time that seem to make a major shift in that moment.

I wish I could pinpoint that this all suddenly happened right after day 47 when I saw a flash of light in my mind’s eye, or on day 897 when I slipped in my friend’s bathroom in Connecticut and hit my head on the toilet bowl causing me to see an image of what I now call the flux capacitor or on day 1562 when I stood on the beach of Mazatlan and a seagull descended on my shoulder (this is straight from my imagination btw).  The boring truth is, I likely got these “super powers” through the accumulation of my daily Tai Chi Ruler practice.

I’ve done this movement at all hours of the day in many cities, countries, and continents, hotel bathrooms, cruise ship decks, on beaches, on rocks, in hotel stairwells at 5am while everyone else was still sleeping in the room, in forests, while as a guest in friends’ homes.  All over the United States, from California to New York and New Hampshire, lots of times here in Toronto, Canada, in Mexico on both the east and west coasts, on the CHEK Cruise in 2007, in Croatia by the Adriatic Sea, in Hungary while visiting and I’m sure I’m forgetting other places.  I only shared day 1000 with my good friend Kyle Shay (whom I incidentally met at that HLC 2 class in Vista back in 2006.)  I happened to be in Krka National Park in Croatia when I sent a txt to Kyle, to let him know day 1000 was conquered.  It was August 29th, 2009., 9:32am local time (yes I did just go through my txt history to find that exact date/time.)

Long story short, 2000 days of active meditation have come and gone.  Where did time fly?

What have you learned about yourself while completing your Gong?