Hackney Class news and new timings

Here are the new rough timings for class from next week 23rd October, until further notice.

6pm   Warm ups
6.30   Salutations and / or Chi Gung
6.45   Short Form instruction (from beginning)
7pm   Sticking, pushing hands, partner work according to experience
7.30   Whole Short Form then Long Form instruction (from beginning)
8pm   Tea
8.15   Whole Long Form (after some silk reeling [figure 8] warm ups)
8.35   Any LF questions, applications and partner work requests (talu, wabu, push hands, knocking)
9pm   The Dance / San Shou instruction (from the beginning)
9.30   Sabre and Sword Forms and partner work
10pm Finish

New beginners are very welcome to stay until 7.30pm. All other regular students are encouraged to arrive as early as they can to join in with warm ups and revising Short Form. The students who have just begun the Long Form are very welcome to stay and busk a whole Long Form each week with us at 8.15pm in addition to learning it each week posture by posture. This is an excellent way to absorb the form without having to learn it all at once. If staying later means you'll need to arrive a bit later, say at 7pm for partner work, then that's fine. Feel free to bring a snack for tea time if that means you'll have stamina to stay longer! I hope the slight changes in format will work well, and we can adjust things if necessary as the term goes on.

I will also be bringing several of my good T'ai Chi books over the next few weeks and am happy to lend them out to students. Regular students are requested to read the T'ai Chi Classics this term, if they haven't already, as this is the basis of our whole approach. I have several different translations which shed different lights on the work, as well as related Classics of the Yang Family, writings on the precursors to T'ai Chi as well as all the major Taoist Classics such as the Tao Te Ching, in translations by Thomas Cleary and others. Other useful books by the Kobayashis, Morihei Ueshiba, T T Liang, Cheng Man-Ch'ing, Wolfe Lowenthal and others are also available.