Schedule and Venue Change

A new year and a new schedule for Tai Chi at Gold's Gym. Commencing Saturday, 07 January 2012, the following new schedule and location will take effect.

Tai Chi will meet in the GGX Studio at 1130 AM vice the Mind and Body Studio. This will provide a larger venue and incidentally some improvements for training since the floor is hardwood rather than carpet. The time change results from the annual gym member survey, in which a number of members expressed that the present class was "too early." It also relieves some schedule conflicts in the Mind and Body studio and places Tai Chi after the Body Flow program in GGX.

Please see the complete schedule at the Gold's Gym Fredericksburg web site or take a sneek peek at a printed copy at the front desk.

End of Year and A New Beginning

Merry Christmas! We approach the end of the year and a new opportunity for a fresh beginning. Best wishes everyone. Good intentions matter less than plodding daily action. Take up a fitness activity you can enjoy this year and do it daily. Take care of your well being and do not allow anything else to distract you from your goals. Investing in and maintaining a fit body and mind will pay big dividends in your daily work and family life both now and in the years to come. Hopefully many of you will find that Tai Chi fits the bill as it will help both mind and body.

I'll share a comment that nutrition and fitness coach, Covert Bailey, used to share. He said "People are always asking me, "What's the best fitness activity? Is it running or swimming or what? and I always tell them the same thing. It's the one you do."

The Purpose of Training and Discipline

There is a quote from "The Life Giving Sword" by Yagyu Munenori, a famous Japanese swordsman. He wrote (tranlation by William Scott Wilson):

When you begin to study, there is something in your mind; you are obstructed by that thing, and it becomes difficult to do anything at all. If you can clear from your mind those things you have learned, they too will become nothing; and when you perform the techniques of the various Ways, the techniques will come easily regardless of what you have learned and without being contrary to it. When you perform an action you will be in harmony with what you have learned, without even being aware of it. ...

When you have run the length of various practices and none of those practices remain in your mind, that very lack of mind itself is the heart of 'all things.' When you have exhaustively learned the various practices and techniques and made great effort in disciplined training, there will be action in your arms, legs, and body but none in your mind; you will have distanced yourself from training, but will not be in opposition to it, and you will have freedom in whatever techniques you perform. You yourself will be unaware of where your mind is, and neither demons nor heresies will be able to find it. Training is done for the purpose of reaching this state. With successful training, training falls away.

This is probably one of my favorite quotations with respect to training and developing skill at anything you do. It was written with respect to swordsmanship and is especially relevant to Tai Chi and other martial arts. Even when we practice Tai Chi solely for the wonderful health benefits it can bring, this truth applies. We begin in a fog of confusion but disciplined training will dissipate that fog and eventually lead to a light of clarity beneath which even the shadow of discipline and training disappear. I am still seeking that light.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats - 1919

Simplicity

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.

Henry David Thoreau

Center of the Sun

For a few weeks now we've been working the Tai Chi for Arthritis form. So far we have been reviewing section one and two. This particular form is based on the Sun style. It was developed by Dr Paul Lam and is the core of the Tai Chi for Arthritis program. It has been the subject of clinical trails and is widely accepted by Arthritis Foundations in many countries (U.S.A, Australia, UK, et.al.). The form is divided into three distinct sections joined by the characteristic Sun style Kai-He (open close hands). Each section can be taught and practiced as a complete routine in it's own right and each section is performed to both the right and left sides. Thus the form is symmetric and balanced unlike many traditional forms.

One of the hallmarks of the Sun style (as stated by Sun Lu Tang in his book on Tai Chi), is an uncompromising commitment to distinguishing the empty and full (Yin and Yang) in the stances. In the form, we really shift the weight fully onto one leg or the other. One the other hand, except when actually stepping, its important to keep both feet in contact with the ground. Just make sure that one foot is bearing all the weight and you are fully centered on the standing leg. Ideally, even though the empty foot is on the ground, you should be able to move the empty foot without disturbing your balance in the least. One result of this characteristic, is an enhanced awareness of center and balance. Another is the simple fact that your steps generally can't be too large or too small or you won't be able to make that full commitment to separating Yin and Yang and you will find yourself "double weighted," but that will be the subject of another post.

New Class Schedule

Our Class now meets Saturday morning and 0915 in the Mind and Body Room at Gold's Gym, 2380 Plank Rd, Frederickburg, VA.