The Journey Within

Another night of table tennis. I always dread going to it every Tuesday night because I think I will be side-lined again. The players there are good – so good that I think they don’t really want to play with me! It’s very much a “child-in-school-who-no-one-wants-to-play-with” syndrome. Of course, I still go. I like going. I think this is the only place I can improve. To play with people much better than me.

Today turned out to be quite different from the other nights. A guy just walked over and told me “let’s do some drills”. And so we went. The forehand, the backhand. Nothing new there, still as inconsistent as ever. Then we started on some chopping drills (slicing the ping pong ball in mid-air). Now this turned out to be quite interesting as I have never done it before, not in a drill fashion. Forehand slice, backhand slice. Because the movements are small, and the ball is slower, it actually increased my focus. I was able to learn to get the rhythm and the feel of the ball. Further on into the drill, I could actually judge how much, or rather how little effort i required to control the slice. “Just relax and slowly tap it over” he said.

Later on, we went back to the forehand drives. Amazingly, my consistency improved dramatically! I was able to control the ball over 20 rounds and still kept the ball in play! I was so surprised that I felt elated throughout the night!

Then, I began to watch other players play. I began to understand how they could execute the shots they are executing. It was a wonderful night.

While walking home, I begin to mull over what happened in the drills. Why did the chops improved my game? The answer came quite unexpectedly from my tai ji training. I felt that the repetition is actually quite meditative, as is the practice of tai ji. It increased my focus and at the same time, kept the mind calm. The slowness of slicing also encouraged the mind to focus on the nuances of each stroke – again, that’s why tai ji is done in a slow manner. And after the drills, it just lifted my whole ball game – the execution improved becaused I was trained in a slow manner, which I believe tai ji would do to, although my level is not there yet!

Maybe I’m just biased towards tai ji. But it has helped me conquered a lot of my inner demons in various aspects of my life. Has it been true to you too?

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Related posts:

1. Slicing carrots
2. A ball of light
3. Inner voices
4. Why train tai ji in the morning
5. The class with the secrets