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.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Sunday, December 25, 2011
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."
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."
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
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.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
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
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
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