This is an excerpt from the final chapter I wrote for the Moon’s 25 Year History. If you’d like to read the entire post or story, you can click here.
The winter session 2020 was ticking along just fine when the pandemic hit our soils. I had been watching my friends in China deal with the virus since November by frequently logging onto WeChat (Chinese Facebook). The Taijiquan community was online offering video lessons to help with immunity and stress. Everyone wore masks.
In March our floor classes became smaller and we shifted to mixed online and in person. Then on March 22, I no longer felt safe or responsible teaching in person, so I called it 100% online. The next day our Governor put out the Stay at Home order. I didn’t have time to process what was happening on a personal level, I just knew I had to get our classes up online. Clearly we were heading into the unknown in traumatic and terrifying ways with no experience of how to make our way through it. The only thing I knew how to do was keep training and teaching like I always do.
Most all the Moon students converted to our online classes. As well, long ago students returned and other friends from around the country and even across the Atlantic regularly Zoom the Moon. Moon’s Doug, Laura, Nicholas & Scooter got up and running with their own classes and supporting me in our larger mixed level classes. Michelle took over Larry’s group for the time being. Students donated over $3000 to help with new expenses and studio rent and to make sure anyone out of a job could still come to classes. Experiencing how quickly we all, teachers and students adapted and once again dug into our changing circumstances, has been profound. And people continue to learn, continue to improve.
Early in my training my first teacher said to me, “all you have to do is show up.” I guess I took him seriously! And now, in the midst of the weirdest times of our lives, when it counts more than ever, we are all showing up. In a very real way, this moment is exactly what training prepares us for. Sure, in “normal times” we show up for classes, we suffer our own inadequacies, we laugh, we cringe, we get glimpses and we lose them. We think about quitting. But we do not. And because we keep coming back to the floor, to our practices, we develop a stability, a capacity inside of ourselves to be able to deal with the unexpected. We may not even realize we have it until we are tested. And Covid is testing us.
I remind myself and our Moon students: this time is our time. It is our time to show up, it is our time to practice staying grounded, flexible and centered. It is our time to breathe in and out, to step left, raise and lower our arms, Topple Mountain Range and Pound the Mortar. It is our time to log on from our kitchens and living rooms and basements and gardens and meet each other as we do every other day, on the training floor. In doing so we will come out of this stronger. We are already more pliant, more flexible. We already have greater heart/mind capacities than we knew were ever possible.
Embrace The Moon School for Taijiquan and Qigong turned 25 May 25th, 2020. As we did for the past 2 months, we opened open our computers, click on Zoom and logged in. We entered from the waiting room and chatted before class just as we do in person. Then, we practiced together as we have for the past two months, from our living rooms, gardens, porches and kitchens. We practiced together as we have for the past 25 years, and as we will continue to do into the unknown future.
