Chi cultivation aids a rapid recovery

by Kerrie Piper
(Tai Chi Trafalgar)

After manipulating my fingers and arm, the doctor told me he thought I’d broken my arm.

A series of radiographs revealed that the doctor was mistaken, there wasn’t actually a break, just extensive soft tissue damage from my wrist all the up to my shoulder. I spent the whole week with support strapping on my arm and was restricted to purely work indoor for the week.

For the whole week, I was unable to rotate, flex or extend my wrist and I was limited to what I could do due to the pain. My next tai chi class was a week after my accident. My arm was still very bruised and my wrist swollen, but I didn’t want to miss out on any of the 48 form, so I went along with my arm strapped as usual. By the end of class, my arm was aching a little bit and I worried that I had overworked it. I thought that my arm would be worse in the morning after too much exercise. But as it turned out, come the morning, there was no pain. My wrist rotation was still limited; however I had much better flexion and extension than I had done for the last week!

I thought back to my chi cultivation from the previous evening. Normally during chi cultivation I feel a warm fuzziness from my palms. Last night I didn’t feel much in my palms, but I did feel a vibration around my right wrist and forearm. The vibrations felt distant, in the way the water in a pool feels when someone bombs in while you’re swimming. You feel the impact through the water even though the person bombing was over by the diving blocks. I hadn’t thought much about this sensation on the night, but I contribute a great deal of my recovery to that tai chi session. Restoring the flow of chi most certainly aided my recovery.