Sunday 25 June 2017

My Favourite Books

My Stroke of Insight by Dr Jill Bolte Taylor is her personal story of how she suffered a stroke and her subsequent recovery.

Whilst this is not a Tai Chi book it is a worthwhile and fascinating read. There is the usual stuff about the Brain and how it works, but for me what is really interesting is how she describes what is happening to her as her mind deteriorates in the course of a few hours. As the left side of her brain shuts down she compares her state to being in Nirvana.

The last chapter is called Finding Your Deep Inner Peace and she posits that we can use the skills of our motor output systems to transform our perspective to the present moment.so for example, this could be Tai Chi, Yoga, Walking etc.

This book is well worth reading.


Sunday 18 June 2017

Letting Go

I first met Linda Chase Broda in London Chinatown in a restaurant at a meeting to set up the Tai Chi Union of Great Britain in the early 1990s, in which she became very active.

I then had the good fortune to stay with her in Manchester through a connection with a tai chi student. She had allowed a film to be shot in her garden with a then student of Erle Montague. She had a fantastic tai chi studio at the back of her house which is where I saw some of her tai chi poetry. It was great.

As is so often the case we move on in life and I lost contact. She and her poetry came into my mind last week so I looked her up on Google to discover that she had sadly passed away in 2011.


Her website is www.lindachase.co.uk and you can read an article about "letting go" here.

Her tai chi inspired poetry can be found in The Wedding Spy.

Sunday 11 June 2017

Clean Energy /Dirty Energy

I like this little post form Robert Twigger's blog.

I have felt this with one of my teachers who went from having this heavy feel to one of incredible lightness.

Read it here