A few years ago my friend Kevin Parker put together a little e-book with 31 exercises for practitioners of Tai Chi.
It isn't a beginners book and there is an assumption that the underlying principles of Tai Chi are understood.
You can find more information and the book here
I thought this article on the Deep River Tai Chi and Bagua website was really good exploring the relationship between the hips and sinking.
Read it here
A friend recently shared the article below about the passing of Master Wu Xi Qing, a White Crane boxer who lived to the venerable age of 90.
Having spent the summer in England, I discovered just a few days ago that my old White Crane boxing friend, Master Wu Xi Qing 吳西卿, passed away earlier this year. He was 90 years old. I would stop off at Master Wu’s tea shop on the way back from my Bagua Zhang classes in Taiwan’s Tainan County where he would often share his views and teachings on Chinese boxing and health cultivation. Sometimes, to illustrate a point, this would involve impromptu sparring in the doorway of his cafe. As he struck simultaneously at my throat and groin, regular customers wandered past entirely unfazed.
More than anything I remember his laughter. He was an old school boxer who would chuckle at the run-ins he had with local mobsters (Master Wu was of a generation of martial artists who would pick fights with street hoods to test their own skills —- until the latter began arming themselves with firearms). His teachers, meanwhile, were fascinating. One had been taught on the Mainland by a priest at a mountain temple where he learnt to circulate qi in harmony with White Crane movements. Other boxers Master Wu learnt from would slip in secretly by boat to teach young Taiwanese in the days of Japanese occupation. The most powerful of these was Ah Feng Shi, a small man from Fujian whom the family paid in opium. Staying for months at a time on the Wu family estate, Ah Feng was sometimes listless until given a pipe, at which point he would leap up and express formidable boxing skills. No local martial artist could beat him. For health cultivation, Master Wu studied with the famed Qigong master Tu Chin Sheng, renowned in Taiwan for pulling a truck with his manhood as a test of his mysterious 99 Shen Gong training.
Tai Chi is about the quality of touch and connection.
This Feldenkrais clip captures this essence.
See
Following on from my previous post, a friend suggested I try exercises for the Vagus nerve. He recommended the book by Stanley Rosenberg which has a number of exercises at the end.
See https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B013ZNI4JC/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0
So what is the Vagus nerve? Click on the link for a detailed article https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/vagus-nerve/
Here is a basic exercise that's easy to do. Try it and see what it does for you.
Working on basic stuff.
This week it's keeping the chin down and not allowing it to jut out and up.
I'm imagining the tip of Pixie's ears pointing up instead of angled backward. That works for me rather than imagining I've got a tiny ball pressed in under my chin.
This is an interesting article about using digital technology and social media as an integral component of a Tai Chi business, representing it as the way forwards in the post covid era.
The traditional class business model is over, or is it? Your thoughts?
Read the article Meet Shirley Chock - CanvasRebel Magazine
This is a great post over on Cook Ding's Kitchen blog. His explanation of what Tai Chi is resonates strongly with me.
The post can be read here: a-retrospective-of-senior-teachers
Here are a couple of videos with sword exercises and principles which I like and find useful.
Practice with a quiet mind and a calm spirit. Thus while you practice T'ai Chi like a long river moving, or a beautiful girl dancing, inside you are dynamic, ready to release an active and nimble tiger when required.
BTCCA handbook second term
Use mind rather than force. When you use the mind, the force will naturally follow it. Use of force alone will make your movements too slow.
BTCCA Handbook for second term
Personally I've never been fond of the lightweight, whippy tai chi swords. I always felt I should have a heavier sword in my hand and my Sun style teacher also said you need the weight.
Here is an article from the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts on this topic although it's not about chinese swords. Food for thought!
Read the article here: https://www.thearma.org/essays/weights.htm#.YzGybDTMI2w
When I first started exploring martial arts in my late teens I took up Wu Shu Kwan.
The Instructors were great. After a while they introduced sparring and I was paired up with another chap.
So it was going well (laugh at this point) and then I thought my partner was going to hit me. I watched the fist travel towards me and then it hit. I had plenty of time to do something but just watched it come in.
The Truth hit me: Wake Up.
Relax/Soften the pectoral muscle where it meets the front deltoid muscle.
It's just a small area and for me it added greatly to hollowing the chest and allowing my energy to sink down.
Try doing your form or a section of it without using your arms. Focus instead on the turning and sinking of the torso to understand how this leads the arms and legs.
Do this a few times and then do the form as usual with greater awareness of the role of the torso.
I like this short clip by Scott Meredith, where you can clearly see how the waist leads the sword.
It's a great training exercise that you put into your solo form.
Might have to start listening to Country Music!
Check this out from the Slanted Flying website - slantedflying.com/country-music-video-features-tai-chi/
Gradually connect the three Tan Tiens, upper, middle and lower, in order to understand and experience the body as an energetic/physically connected whole.
To perpetually focus on the lower Tan Tien ultimately becomes an act of Ego.
" The mind must be brought to practice in an alert state, not dulled by fatigue, appetites or pain. Otherwise your time is spent in practicing dullness"
BTCCA Handbook for the First Term
"The mouth is gently but firmly closed. The feeling is a "a little bit closed". The tongue touches the roof of the mouth behind the front teeth. This facilitates the production of the correct amount of saliva, which should be swallowed, and completes a circuit for chi."
BTCCA Handbook for the Second Term.
I first met Heron Beecham in the 1980's at the British T'ai Chi Ch'uan Association where we both studied under John Kells.
From that initial exposure to T'ai Chi Heron has gone on to explore the internal martial arts studying with a number of notable teachers such as Sam Tam.
Personally I like reading about other people's experiences of studying internal martial arts and Heron's journey and insights have been published in a little "Zine" booklet.
This is available at Watkins Bookshop in London www.watkinsbooks.com , also Amazon UK www.amazon.co.uk/Heron-Beecham, zoelaw.com/shop/ and thephotographersgallery.org.uk/
Here are a selection of images from the "Zine"
On the back of a successful exhibition at Roy's Art Fair in London recently, my friend Adele Cloony is featured in this month's Kindred Spirit magazine, issue 181 May/June looking at her Enso calligraphy.
Enso has its root in Chinese Buddhism and Taoism and is synonymous with a Japanese Zen circle. The article in Kindred Spirit magazine explains Adele's approach and the synergy with her T'ai Chi practice and how her interest in chinese calligraphy developed from visualising energy reaching to the end of her sword.
Adele's website is https://www.adelecloony.co.uk/ and the Kindred Spirit website is https://kindredspirit.co.uk/
I'm going through the old instruction books that were given out when I started studying T'ai Chi with John Kells at what was the British T'ai Chi Ch'uan Association back in 1982.
The important points at the beginning of each book were an invaluable guide to the principles. This one on mental control reads:
"Our movement must in the first place be brought under conscious mental control. All our movements have some kind of intention preceding them. Our aim is to make this intention completely clear and precise so it can be effective. It is important to think of using the mind rather than simply using energy. This means that in the practice of T'ai Chi the intention of the mind in making the movement is given priority over the movement itself.
After a sufficient length of practice this conscious mental of our movements becomes unconscious, so that we can respond naturally in any situation, when up to till now a conscious mental process came between the stimulus and response, thereby , slightly slowing the response. This means that the response is spontaneous, no intermediate mental process between the stimulus and the response.
The response is as quick as it can be, and thereby as effective as it can be. To reach this stage requires instruction from a qualified teacher over a number of years. So the beginner should concentrate on the use of the mind in the movement rather than the movement itself. He should direct the relaxation of the his body from his mind and use just enough energy to support himself while keeping sufficiently alert to enable him to concentrate enough to practice his mental control. "
This is a great article on the Slantedflying website.
Read it here
In my own experience you can do your form faster to find out at what point you are deviating from the principles and then feed that back into a slower form and back again.
A Tai Chi friend of mine recently posted a link to a Taoist reading list on her Great River T'ai Chi blog.
I've got several versions of the Tao Te Ching but my favourite has always been the one by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English because of the photographs.
Click on Daoist Reading List to see in full.
Let go in the shoulders.
Dr Chi Chiang Tao likened the arms to elephants trunks. The arms don't use stiff, local muscular strength but are propelled by the body.
Explore the relationship between centrifugal and centripetal force.
Discover the joy in your tai chi right now.
It's not all about some kind of egotistic , masochistic self-flagellation.
