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Below is an excerpt of a letter from a long distance senior student sister.  This is in the context of responding to an older post on Student Corner: The devil's in the details.  This post involved Wing Chun hand positions.  You can view it by clicking here for a refresher.

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This student studies with other teachers in her area. 


Sometimes it can be challenging to reconcile two different systems.  Recently, I was told to try to just move my hand rather than to move my body to execute a certain drill.  The point of the drill, I think, was to experiment with certain rotations of the hands, which are useful for seeing the spiraling movements, but I am always trying to have the body make the hand move, remembering Master Jou saying, "Arms have no movement," in the last workshop I attended with him and your principle of whole-body movement.

Probably because I have finally broken though in the movement of the hip joints, I think, I am especially focused on this.  Two things, in particular, have come out of my working on this:  I understand now why you told me that I need to be 80/20 in Roll Back rather than going to 100/0 and what being 50/50 in Cloud Hands means.  In one of the taiji books I read, there was an anecdote about Cheng Man-ching standing in front of his desk and moving; not wanting to interrupt him, the person who told this anecdote waited for a while then finally interrupted him and asked what he was doing.  The name he gave was Constant Bear, and Cheng said that it was all you need for taiji practice. 

I believe that movement was what we call Bear Swings through the Woods (and Wags Its Tail).  I first began to work on this in the cane form when I found it difficult to move from one posture to the next in some places because I had weight on the foot I needed to pick up, and through some experimentation and a return to the Four Flowers, I began to see what I was doing wrong.  I am still working on this, of course, but I'm starting to have the sensation of riding a wave when things are going well!

Taiji Daily Handy Helpers

As we mention continuously, taiji is based on principles of movements and is not tied to a specific set of movements.  Any activity done using taiji principles can be taiji practice!!  

One of my favorite things is finding the places that taiji principles creep into my daily life or the places where taiji practice can make things easier.

A fellow student, Gary Forbach, ran across the blurb below in an AARP magazine recently and sent it our way.  We thought we'd share it and ask for other places you all might use taiji to keep yourselves safe from injury, as well as the spots that you find taiji enhancing your daily life.

A couple that pop up into my mind are below the image.  Share yours in the comments!

Daily Taiji
  • Opening a public door:  Have you ever had someone pull a door at the exact time you push - only to have both of you topple over and scare each other?  Taiji pulls and pushes are completed whole body and are not executed by leaning into or away from someone. 
  • Pushing a car:  A classic example of how we can draw energy up through the ground, direct it through the waste and send it right into the back of that car to get it moving!
  • Holding a toddler:  The sticking and reading that we practice in push hands, combined with a light touch, can be very useful when holding a squirming toddler.  You don't want them to feel trapped but you can't let them get away either!
  • Relaxing and deep breathing in trying situations:  While this may be something push hands players experience more than form practitioners, there is something to be said for learning how to be relaxed and breath while someone is being slightly aggressive in your direction.

Grasp Sparrow's Tail Posture Instructions Updated

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“Grasp Sparrow Tail” (Lan Que Wei) is a sequence of postures that recurs 8 times total during the entire 154 posture, Wudangshan 108 Taijiquan Form, the most repeated sequence of any group of postures in this Form.  It is comprised of 4 separate postures:  Ward Off, Rollback, Press and Push (Peng, Lu, Ji, An), or 4 of the all-important 8 Gates above the waist, making this sequence even more important for students to understand.  Cross Hands (Shi Zi Shou) is repeated 3 times, and Close (He Taiji) bring the Form to its final posture.  In total this entire sequence of 39 repeated postures comprises one fourth of all the postures of Wudangshan 108 Taijiquan; a number that fits with most of the popular “short” Forms developed in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. 

Many of you referred to our written instructions during your early days of learning form or snuck a peak once in a while to remember exactly what you do on which counts!

LaoMa has worked tirelessly and updated these instructions.  The new and improved version is available on the website in the Class Info tab - under Class Documents.  

Take a moment to review this new edition of instructions.  It is clear and concise as well as up to date on new counts for the postures.

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You may note that Single Whip is missing from this instruction set.  Keep an eye out for the new and improved instruction set for Single Whip and Cross Hands that will be coming out soon!  No need to wait in line - we'll post the new version online for your convenience!! 

On the Cat Walk

Shifu Rose Oliver of Double Dragon Alliance Center, Shanghai, China, modeling, front and back, our Black Bamboo Pavilion t-shirt.

Rose Shifu conducts workshops sponsored by Magic Tortoise Taijiquan School, at several of DrJay's longtime students' schools along our east coast, as well as here in Durham-Chapel Hill.

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Two Fishes: Poetry and Taijiquan

Many of us have very personal experiences for how the practice of taijiquan has impacted our daily lives.  There are many connecting threads between practicing the art and the many other facets of our lives.  The longer we practice, the more tightly these bonds weave and the more we are able to identify and appreciate the impact of taijiquan on daily life and daily life's impact on our practice of taijiquan.

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Because taijiquan is such a solitary practice, we very seldom hear about this personal journey from our fellow classmates, teachers, and peers.  However, sharing these impacts and perceptions strengthens us all, allowing us to experience our art form and our daily lives in new ways through new eyes.

Below is an exceptional example of this type of exploration.  The gift of this essay exploring a very intimate internal experience of two areas coming together in a life deserves great consideration.  Not only will it allow you to hear about another practitioner's experience of the art form - it will allow likely awake in you those areas in your own life where you feel the fingers of taijiquan tickling on a regular basis.   

Thanks to our resident poet, Debra Kang Dean, for allowing us to share this with you.  And for giving us a glimpse into her personal practice and experience of taijiquan!

Two Fishes

by

Debra Kang Dean

Between 1997 and 1999, I undertook intensive study in Wudangshan 108, a taiji form, with Almanzo “LaoMa” Lamoureux of the Magic Tortoise Taijiquan School, commuting over a hundred miles each way from Greenville to Chapel Hill for eighteen months—first one, then two, then three times a week—and, after I had moved to Massachusetts, making periodic week-long visits to North Carolina. I had been writing poetry in earnest for ten years, and though I was exercising regularly before I began practicing taiji, I could not shake off the feeling that I was becoming a sort of “talking head,” a creature of language only, and that I was losing my connection with what had been the source of my poetry—in other words, the left brain activity seemed to have subdued the right brain and was making me a little crazy.

Wudangshan 108 is both complex and beautiful, and these are the qualities that drew me to it the first time I saw it performed. I knew only that I wanted to learn and be able to do the form well, and I was fortunate that my late husband encouraged me to pursue it. Soon, in addition to attending classes and practicing, however, I was also reading books in an effort to understand Daoism and the principles underlying taiji movement. This full-immersion style had also characterized my ten-year engagement in poetry, and I confess there was a time when, though I was still writing, I had considered redirecting all of my energies to taiji. As fate would have it, however, within a two-week period in 1997, my chapbook manuscript won the Harperprints Poetry Chapbook Competition, and the editors at BOA Editions selected for publication the book-length manuscript I had been working on for seven years after receiving my MFA degree. I felt, in part, that I was being called back to poetry.

In 1999, I traveled to Missoula, Montana, to interview the late Patricia Goedicke, one of my poetry teachers. While I was her student and even much later, she repeatedly encouraged me to open up to the larger, Whitmanesque sweeps of language in my poetry. On that visit, however, when I came inside after practicing taiji in her back yard, she said, “Now I understand.” Unbeknownst to me, she had watched me practice, and she said that it looked as if I were making boundaries visible as I moved through the postures. I love this image because it reflects the way I think about writing poetry, too. While several of the taiji teachers I’ve worked with resist the idea of postures and substitute the word “movements” to emphasize the flow from one posture into another, I think of the brief pauses marking the postures as being like the place one has learned a line should break, and it takes practice to tune the inner ear to know such points of balance; as with poetry, that place determines the meeting ground of strength and weakness, of risk and expressiveness.

Many of the corrections a taiji teacher makes are attempts to impart a vision of the form as a whole and an occasion for students to learn without judgment what their limitations are—both of body and of mind—at that particular moment in their development. In taiji, one’s medium is the body, and form marks out a place for exploration and discovery. So for me taiji is not only an art of transcendence but also of immanence, which is precisely why I love it so much. Here one comes face to face with the miracle of the incarnation. How is it we come to inhabit these bodies? Over the course of my engagement with taiji, I have known myself as being in but not entirely of the body only a few times, and such experiences leave traces even in an often skeptical consciousness like mine.

Needless to say, I do not wish to be “out of nature” as Yeats used the phrase in “Sailing to Byzantium”; rather, I wish to know the “dying animal” I am “fastened to” in order to go deeper into it—because it, too, is part of nature. Poetry and taiji help me to do this—poetry through motion in apparent stillness and taiji through stillness in apparent motion. In poetry, the body expresses itself through the mind, and in taiji the mind expresses itself through the body. Body and mind—these are my two fishes, another name for the yin-yang symbol, and it’s interesting to consider that a fish must move to breathe and so to live. With sight, where the two fields of vision overlap, we perceive depth; whatever it is I know as spirit is like that.

For a long time I thought I was drawn to taiji rather than zazen or yoga because I had been an athlete in my youth, that my body still craved motion, which is a partial truth. I have found that on the physical level, practicing a long form that has been engrammed can be almost as pleasurable as a five-mile run. At higher levels of practice, however, taiji, sometimes called “shadow boxing,” also requires using the imagination to bring to life a carefully choreographed set of movements known “by heart.” It’s said that a good practitioner will so shape the patterns of movement that an imagined other becomes visible to those who have studied taiji, and those who have not can sometimes recognize when a practitioner has put his or her whole self—body, mind, and spirit—into the effort by the seemingly effortless quality of movement.

Nearly fifteen years after starting to learn Wudangshan 108, I have come to believe that the solitary aspects of the practice of taiji and of poetry are different but complementary modes of meditation, one wordless and the other full of words, that regulate threads of connection, including the inhalations and exhalations of breath. In taiji we speak of silk-reeling energy, and in poetry the unit of attention or energy is the line, a word that can be traced etymologically to flax and, when it enters Old English, means “string, row, [or] series.”

In private lessons during my period of intense training in North Carolina, my teacher would often focus on one section of the form and then offer what sometimes seemed like a non-stop series of corrections, which I never found discouraging. Sometimes it was challenging, of course; however, because it was not simply a matter of changing the position of my hand, say, but of understanding it as a problem that might originate in my feet, I had to find my own way there. LaoMa told me on several occasions during these lessons that he wanted me to learn the form as taught to him by his teacher. By this means of transmission, taiji became for me more than exercise or just beautiful movement because, however imperfectly I might be performing it, I was learning to embody a form and becoming part of a human chain that went back to Zhang Sanfeng, who is generally credited with creating this art and to whom my teacher’s teacher traced Wudangshan 108. So I have come to see this form as a “songline.”

When I practice Wudangshan 108, then, even if just a small part of it, how can I feel alone? I am no longer strictly in the present but have, instead, brought something from the past into it. And yet, as if it were an inevitable outgrowth of Daoist thought, my teacher also told me that after I mastered the form—he is such an optimist!—I would almost be obliged to put my signature on it, which I think is not about originality but about engaging with the form in the light of the present, of which I am a part; in other words, I am to be not just a place holder but a meeting ground where what is essential in the form is carried into the future so that the line may remain unbroken. This requires learning from the wisdom of the body what is substantial and insubstantial at any given moment and how, because movement is change, one becomes the other for as long as this beautiful wave of postures lasts.

Surely the journey to mastery of such forms lasts as long as life does and may suffer many interruptions, as mine certainly has. It is so strange to be writing in anticipation of a visit to work with LaoMa later this summer. Though I have mostly kept a hand in taiji, in terms of time, I feel a little like a prodigal returning after a long absence. I know that in one respect, these are the sort of journeys that end only with death; in conventional terms, Dīng Hóngkuí, my teacher’s teacher, Patricia Goedicke, one of my poetry teachers, and Bradley P. Dean, my husband, are insubstantial now. And yet, for a moment, here they are, present.

When I do the whole of Wudangshan 108, I want to make my way and make visible my passage through a meeting ground that is also always precisely here. Writing poetry, I try to remember that the Chinese word for poetry is a composite of one character meaning both “word” and “speech,” and another meaning “temple”; I want to call into being that temple, whose true medium, beneath the words, is breath. Obviously, I don’t live on this plane; mostly, I just keep breathing. Because of those who came before me and left their marks, however, I can imagine it and try to keep moving, as best I can, with the hope that at some point, I will find myself standing on the threshold.

 

 

                                                                                                                                          July 2012

More support for Tai Chi

Obviously, we don't need yet another reason to practice Taijiquan!  But it's nice to be backed up on the "it's just plain good for you" idea! 

Durham T'ai chi classes

Thanks to Gary Forbach, who sent this article our way.

Tai Chi May Help Prevent Falls

Practicing tai chi helps older people improve their balance and avoid falls, a review of studies has found.

Tai chi is a form of Chinese martial arts now practiced as exercise. It involves a specific program of graceful movements, accompanied by deep breathing and mental focus, that slowly move the center of balance from one leg to the other.

Researchers found 10 randomized trials analyzing the effect of tai chi on the incidence of falls or the time until an elderly person first has a fall. All studies compared tai chi to usual care or other treatments like physical therapy, stretching or exercise.

MMA vs. Taiji Master?

For those of you not on Facebook or without a feed full of taiji videos, this short video has been making the rounds.  It's very short - 10 second fight!  

"A (short) video has gone viral on Chinese social media today showing a "fight" between a mixed martial artist and a Tai Chi "master." (http://shanghaiist.com/2017/04/28/mma-vs-tai-chi.php)

Take a moment and share your thoughts through the comments link below.  

Effective Practice revisited

After our last post, one of our students brought a podcast that touches on how our brains learn to our attention.  Bill sent us a link to a Bulletproof episode that contains an interview with Anat Baniel.  She talks about nine steps that can be followed for peak brain and body performance.  

The podcast is longer (about an hour) but the last half may be interesting to taiji practitioners.  She outlines a few of her steps and talks about how they are effective.  Around minute 31, she begins to talk about mindfulness in movement.  Allowing time to observe the body and what it is doing provides time to process and react.  

Variations are also a part of her system.  They allow the brain to work on movements and allow change to happen within an action, slowly and over time.  Changing movements can help you focus on the task at hand because you do things less automatically.

She also talks about slowing movements down to allow the brain to wake up and process. Keeping a slower speed can help the brain process and change the motion in a way that wouldn't be possible at higher speeds.

Reducing force is another step of hers.  She argues that the greater force a movement has, the more force is needed for the practitioner to register the need to change and slows the ability to respond.  

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While I'm paraphrasing much her her information, it is an interesting conversation that is not about taiji at all.  Baniel works with movement to treat neurological problems and rehabilitate injuries.  Yet, if you listen, you'll hear a great argument for many of the basic practices in taijiquan!  

(I would suggest picking it up around minute 31 if you want to take the time! :-)

Thanks Bill!!!  We're happy to find new things through our students and our conversations on here!

(Link: https://blog.bulletproof.com/nine-essential-steps-peak-brain-body-performance-anat-baniel-394/)

Effective Practice

Knowing how to practice and what to practice is really important in advancing any skill you are trying to learn. An interesting TED Ed video, forwarded by one of our students (thanks!!), has some great points to consider while constructing your practice for any skill.  

You'll notice a little taiji thrown into this.  Can you pick out taiji's favorite advice in this list?  

All of these apply to our practice!  Tells us what helps your practice or how this might influence your habits moving forward.

How To Practice Effectively, According To Science

Practice is a physical activity, of course, but it's also hard mental work — if you're doing it right. A new video published by TED Ed gets down to the scientific nitty-gritty of what good practice looks like, and what it does to your brain. (Think axons and myelin, not "muscle memory" — muscles don't have "memory.")
As Annie Bosler and Don Greene, the creators of this TED Ed lesson, point out, this advice can apply to everything from music to sports. They define effective practice as "consistent, intensely focused and target[ing] content or weaknesses that lie at the edge of one's current abilities." That's another way of saying: Don't waste your time practicing the stuff you already know, just to fill up those minutes.
More of their specific advice, with each point bolstered by research:

Read more here: http://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2017/03/06/518777865/the-most-practical-tips-for-practicing-according-to-science

Movement practice to create change

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It seems this year is a time to talk of change!  The new year brought the typical new year resolutions but, for some, it also brought a mindset towards enacting change in wider communities.  Some movements for change involve using various physical movement practices to help enact and create change in ever widening pools of interaction.  There are examples of techniques like this being used for physically empowering women and children, bringing communities into harmony with each other, and building teamwork. 

One specific example of this is the "Move to End Violence" group.  Norma Wong has a discussion of their stance and physical practice here: http://www.movetoendviolence.org/blog/discussing-stance-and-physical-practice-with-norma-wong/ 

Practices such as this provide a window into exploring how your practice of taijiquan influences not only your physical life but also your mental reaction and experience of life and the experiences around you.  

Possible thoughts to explore, discuss and consider?

  • How does connection with breath affect your taiji practice?  Do you use the focus on that breath to center you mind in other places in your life?
  • How does practicing a relaxed yet alert physical state influence your physical presence through the rest of your day?  Can you feel any influence of the alert relaxation in your mental reactions to situations around you?
  • Does practicing slow deliberate movement forward, back, left and right help you be more agile in your daily movements?  Do you find yourself more willing to explore different directions in your view of the world around you?
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All or none of these things may apply to you and your practice!  What other things do you feel influenced by your practice.  Do you feel the outside changing the inside?  

How has your practice changed you?  Is it stronger legs?  Better balance?  A relaxed, amused approach to the jerk down the hall? Join us in the discussion by posting a comment below!

Inspiration - Low

While we focus primarily on our training with taijiquan forms, we can draw inspiration from everywhere in the martial arts community.  In all forms, stance work is a primary piece of the puzzle and leg strength can be a big part of that training.

Primarily, we see taijiquan performed in relatively high stances.  However, as a student progress in their studies, they may train lower, being sure not to compromise their structure or form.  Working lower will give you increased leg strength and stamina.  

What do you see happening in this video?  Does it inspire a new focus in your own practice?

Celebrating the Fire Chicken Year - 2017!

Everyone gathered this new year to celebrate the arrival of the Fire Chicken Year!  It was done in high style (as always).  Black Bamboo Pavilion co-hosted the event with Magic Tortoise.  Students, friend and family were treated to a wide variety of demos and tasty treats. 

Another Internal Martial Art

LaoMa’s experience with Wing chun go back to VA beach with a teacher who today is a teacher of other teachers or masters, Duncan Leong.  LaoMa's experience with Duncan and “Doc” Savage, who was a student both LM and Duncan,  was similar to what you see in this video.  Wing chun is a more internal art than a hard style art. 

The accompaniment has some thoughts from Bruce Lee in it.

What do you see in this compilation of applications?  Do you see similarities to taijiquan?

Raise in Rank: John Rhodes

Join us in celebrating a new Senior Student to the Black Bamboo Pavilion Taijiquan School!!

John Rhodes raised his rank on Thursday this week! 

John has trained diligently for 4 years (joining us in Oct 2012).  Although he completed the whole form in a little over three years, he took some time to solidify the entire form in his memory before testing. Wudangshan 108 is a taijiquan form that really consists of 154 postures spread over 6 sections which a seasoned practioner usually does in just over 45 minutes.  John completed in 35 minutes and is now considered to be at the beginning of his training.  John has supplemented empty hand form classes with the push hands class and the weapons class, giving him time to work on function, applications and fundamentals in different settings.  He will not continue the never ending task of refining the form by getting corrections, exploring function and endless rounds of repetition!!

As Master Jou says – John will start to fill the empty shoe box!! 

Congratulations to our taiji brother John!

Hidden Taiji Applications

We've heard many different ways that taiji stealthily sneaks into daily life and improves function and movement of many practitioners in a surprising way.  Swimming, golf swings and ballroom dancing all manage to improve a bit with some applied taiji principles!  Now we can add paddling a canoe to this list!  Lynn Wright, a weapons student and long time student in the Magic Tortoise School, has brought this article to our attention.  

When you apply to waist as the driving force to movements, the arms have to work less and the movements become more powerful!  Where do you see and feel your taiji in your daily life?

T'ai Chi for Paddling

Paddling is all about putting that paddle, single- or double-bladed, into the water and touring, surfing, playing, and having a good time. T’ai Chi is a Chinese martial art performed very slowly on land. So what could one have to do with the other?

That was my reaction in the mid-1980s, when I started studying T’ai Chi. To my way of thinking then, my whitewater paddling and T’ai Chi were separate. As the years have passed, I have redefined each and at times wonder whether I am doing T’ai Chi in my boat while paddling or paddling while doing T’ai Chi on land.

Read more at http://www.canoekayak.com/canoe/taichi/#AIqeGwx2EQGmmMf9.99

Top Ten List

While there are probably a ton of differing top ten lists, this one is interesting.  It gives a martial arts student a quick run down of a few different masters.  So, these super perky and animated fellas can give you  a quick run down of who is on their top ten list!  Wonder do you recognize any names ;-)

(Hint: It's not LaoMa...)

Check yourself!

One of the most valuable tool a student has is self observation and correction.  With this blog, we try to encourage our students to look at other people doing taiji and to reflect back on their own form.  What can we learn from what someone else is doing; what does this person do better than us? 

That being said - everyone hates to see themselves doing taiji!!  It's uncomfortable to look at your form and realize that our knees wobble and our backs aren't straight.  But over time, you can learn to see past the few pounds you need to loose and the bad hair day.  Taking a slightly removed attitude, you can learn so much from watching yourself!

a Rabbit and a Dog has a current blog post that is a wonder example of this!  Not only can we learn from her observations but we can learn from her example!  

Take a few minutes to review her observations of her own form and to see the demonstration of her Yang-style taijiquan. 

“If you can’t recognize your faults…
…you’ll never improve.”
This past week, we did a demonstration for Mei-Ling and her family members who were visiting the Center. I chose Taijiquan because I really enjoy training it and performing it in front of an audience makes me uncomfortable.
If there is something that makes me uncomfortable, I’ll usually do it as long as it’s relatively safe and builds a skill I want to have.
This is especially important for Taijiquan because I should be as soft and relaxed as possible and performing can bring me to the opposite state. I have to be physically soft and mentally centered not just for performances, but also if I’m ever in a situation where I have to use it.

Click here to continue reading.  You'll find her demonstration as well as self corrections she's noted.