Asked by a beginner what pushing hands should feel like...
We could mind the push as much as a birch minds the breeze.
But I did also say it might take a while for it to feel that way.
Showing posts with label push hands. Show all posts
Showing posts with label push hands. Show all posts
13 February 2020
10 February 2020
Some recent pictures
It's been a while since I have made time to sort photos for here, apologies. A new phone which doesn't like speaking to my laptop has made it a bit more difficult, but crossed fingers, that's solved. So here are a few nice shots from January.
4 waist turn single pushing hands at Mark's Tuesday class,
Charles and Richard practising 'bees knees'.
Wednesday morning beginners class at
Tooting Bec Lido Pavilion, sticking practice.
New crew joined old hands for the Dance. Congratulations on the long Form group
on starting this wonderful aspect of T'ai Chi study, first posture already looking good.
I got out during the last non-gale force winds moment of sunshine for a bit of staff practice.
Oversized woolly hat is essential, obviously.
28 May 2019
Aberdeenshire
sticking at Wild Twins
Davina and Janet doing push hands
Aberdeenshire sunshine
Thanks to all who came for a great weekend of T'ai Chi.
25 May 2018
Yielding
Mark has been rereading some of John Kells' writings and sharing them on Tuesday this week as we worked deeply on push hands. 'Outreach, enter, join, accompany, linger'.
Very different from 'get out of the way', 'do whatever works' and 'deflect to maintain ward-off', which I have also heard for 'roll-back' on my T'ai Chi travels...
All of the above can be made to work, by which I mean, you will not get pushed over at that precise moment. Does that constitute success? Is a young birch sapling the same as a telegraph pole or a rotary clothes dryer?
More importantly, what does your regular practice cultivate? When you are old and not so strong and fast, what will you have left to rely on? For a woman, of average height and build, such as myself, it was never worth investing in getting to be the very strongest or very fastest, as it would have been impossible. Of course I aim to be fit, have good posture, and I do attend to my physicality. The T'ai Chi Classics exhort us to be softer, more responsive and more aware every day. This we can do until we are old and venerable. It improves all of life vastly, and makes us more likely to evade life's blows and flourish even in hard times. Also, if you want to be walking and living freely in your old age, and not having falls, then T'ai Chi is proven to aid this.
En route, the practice of T'ai Chi Ch'uan is rich, interesting, relaxing and wonderful, means you meet superb folks, make good friends and have some exercise each week. These alone would be worth the effort. You may, incidentally, attain the pearl of great price.
Very different from 'get out of the way', 'do whatever works' and 'deflect to maintain ward-off', which I have also heard for 'roll-back' on my T'ai Chi travels...
All of the above can be made to work, by which I mean, you will not get pushed over at that precise moment. Does that constitute success? Is a young birch sapling the same as a telegraph pole or a rotary clothes dryer?
More importantly, what does your regular practice cultivate? When you are old and not so strong and fast, what will you have left to rely on? For a woman, of average height and build, such as myself, it was never worth investing in getting to be the very strongest or very fastest, as it would have been impossible. Of course I aim to be fit, have good posture, and I do attend to my physicality. The T'ai Chi Classics exhort us to be softer, more responsive and more aware every day. This we can do until we are old and venerable. It improves all of life vastly, and makes us more likely to evade life's blows and flourish even in hard times. Also, if you want to be walking and living freely in your old age, and not having falls, then T'ai Chi is proven to aid this.
En route, the practice of T'ai Chi Ch'uan is rich, interesting, relaxing and wonderful, means you meet superb folks, make good friends and have some exercise each week. These alone would be worth the effort. You may, incidentally, attain the pearl of great price.
02 April 2018
29 December 2017
Hannover Push Hands Meet
For those of you interested in fixed feet pushing hands, and finding out what not stepping does to people, might be interested in going to this. I went one year, it was very interesting, and wrote a report for Taichi magazine. Some great people go, and the workshops can be fun. The push hands is very different...
12 March 2017
A good yield
Here comes another push.
You do something and don't get pushed over.
So it worked, right?
Before I answer that I want to recommend a wonderful book: The Essential Writings of Wendell Berry, edited by Paul Kingsnorth called 'The World-Ending Fire'. How can the award-winning writings of an agrarian, a farmer from Kentucky, no less, be of interest and help to us in our ongoing T'ai Chi journey?
The connection is in how we define 'yield'. Very briefly, Berry has spent over 40 years farming and writing about it from the viewpoint of someone who lives on the land, sees its good health and protection as part of his own health, as well as his duty. After each harvest, or when livestock are taken from a field, he describes how the traditional small farmer does not just think in terms of the tonnage of crop or of meat that it yields, but in the condition of the soil, the richness of the wildlife, the possibility of habitat for beneficial species, the prevention of run-off and soil-erosion, indeed from the pleasure he or she takes in it: in sum, a complete picture requiring there to be good conditions for continuing to farm that land. This implies a duty of care to the wider landscape than just your farm, which seems such an old-fashioned idea to the bean-counting mind of the modern person, but makes perfect sense if you, for instance, hope your children may one day farm the same place. (Or if you actually give a hoot about anything other than a fast buck). Quick fixes based on technology or commerce cannot help a whole environment like the combined care of people integrated into and loving of their locale. If yield continues to be measured in tonnage alone, and not in the increased health, depth and richness of the world's soils, and the good lives of the people who live and farm there, then the prediction that our topsoil will be gone by the end of this century will come to pass.
What this seemingly unrelated topic has to do with T'ai Chi yielding, other than the strictly etymological link, is the negative effects of defining yield very narrowly. Perhaps we think in terms of 'did I have to move my feet or not' (which is the definition used in the frankly ridiculous sport of T'ai Chi Competition Pushing Hands). All the great fighting arts of the world (and all actual fights in real life) use stepping of some kind. It's great to practice fixed feet pushing hands and learn to stand your ground using softness, and this is an essential part of our training: but it is an exercise, which must lead to learning how to step. There is a limit to what standing in one place can allow, sometimes after we have turned, we must step, so as not to block, deflect or start wrestling with the opponent. (Note that blocking, deflecting, locking and controlling are the epitome of the arts of the Security Forces of any state, and some ordinary people also devote their time to learning these). It is also true that we should not step too soon to avoid the attack, as any good T'ai Chi player will just stick, adhere and follow: backing us up. I have pushed hands with many other people from diverse schools and styles over the years, and you can search this blog for my reports from Taichi Caledonia and Push Hands Hannover. When I watched two fixed feet folks wrestling over their tiny patch of ground by grabbing, hanging on and winding up in bizarre postures, I felt immensely sad, any beginner Sumo trainee could have moved them with one hand. T'ai Chi is not a great wrestling art! Why make it into one? Greco-Roman, Sumo or plain western wrestling are all vastly superior. It is like like trying to paint a mural with a watercolour brush. I know this strange hybridisation has happened to other martial arts which have become sports, such as Tae Kwon Do, so I should not be so surprised.
What makes all traditional styles of T'ai Chi so rich and so special? Too many things for me to list, but one is yielding, seen most often in the Form and push hands as Roll-Back. I have practised it in Chen Style, Sun Style and Yang Style so far, and all are equally as deep. One outreaches and connects to the push or incoming attack, really senses what is going on, stays upright and turns, not allowing the push to land on you, and yet somehow drawing it out of the person until they are unbalanced and either fall, retreat or stop, at which point the appropriate response can be made, without conscious decision making or recourse to a list of techniques. It takes years to be able to do this well and is as rewarding and frustrating to learn as any musical instrument.
If the answer to a problem such as 'we need more fuel to make electricity' is 'let's strip mine this mountain', or 'let's frack this valley in a National Park', then yes, when someone pushes you in T'ai Chi, or in life, deflect them any way you can so that you don't have to step. In fact, why not just kick them in the head, or better still break their arm? Then you definitely won't have to deal with them again, (maybe just their angry friends...) If you define successful problem solving in tiny, narrow terms, such as 'having yielded' as 'not having moved your foot', then what I am going to suggest won't be of interest to you. Defining problems and solutions in simplistic terms is the popular contemporary specialisation of an entire army of bureaucrats in every walk of life: medicine, education, agriculture, ecology, charities... you name it. Not seeing things as a whole, as interwoven, but choosing to see them as systems and machines, which behave in mechanistic ways, is a widespread mainly undiagnosed disease.
My suggestion is this: in terms of T'ai Chi yielding: a good yield has only occurred if what we gave back was proportional to what we received. Our posture at the end of a yield should be as upright as when we began, and remain as soft. We need to have received and not rejected the incoming energy, or tried to control it and make it go away. In many respects we need to get in the way, rather than out of the way. After yielding there needs to be no lingering discomfort or agitation (I call this 'residue') that prevents us from immediately joining with the next moment, push, person. Rather than lose our posture and wrangle with someone we should easily be able to 'hop like a sparrow' if uprooted, (which is a wonderful form of yielding, allowing us to be rooted and grounded a split second later, inches or feet from where we just were, ready to yield, push or issue straight away). After a push, however unexpected, we hope to be in as good a frame of mind and body as before it, if not better.
Interestingly, in Nassim Nicholas Taleb's terminology, the unexpected push could be termed a 'black swan event', and if we are merely strong or resilient, we may one day still be overpowered, in T'ai Chi that's like practising hard force all our years then finding at a certain age we just can't rely on our strength or speed any more. If we are week and fragile, and have never developed our centre-line and ability to turn, we will be prone to 'tofu T'ai Chi' or 'noodling', and eventually we will certainly be hard hit. However, if we are 'anti-fragile', we can actually be enlivened and energised by pushes, as we can by really engaging with the unexpected things life throws at us.
I hope I have interested the T'ai Chi practitioner in a broader appreciation of what denotes a good yield, inspired by what Wendell Berry suggests is a deeper way to appreciate what constitutes successful, sustainable farming. I am currently up in Scotland teaching the Aberdeenshire students, and we worked physically on all these things last night in the regular partner work session, resulting in some incredibly soft yields and some wonderful returns. Yield is 'what is given up': in the fully paradoxical nature of being totally empty in order to receive, and also completely full in order to give back. When I get home to my copies of the T'ai Chi Classics I will add the relevant quotes for the interested reader, as everything I have mentioned above is fully backed-up in the Classics. But for now, from memory: 'If after many years you still cannot neutralise a push, seek the defect in the legs and the feet'. Not: 'push them away harder', 'lean over and grab them' or 'try and make them move their foot then say you won'.
Much so-called practical T'ai Chi has no practicality outside the gold-fish-bowl of competition. Lists of techniques are no answer for life's, or the street's demands. To quote the Classics again: 'The principles are few, the permutations are endless'. The incredible yielding taught by Dr Chi, which I have felt independently in several totally unrelated students and grand-students of his, has been, without doubt, of greatest benefit to my life, up there with learning to read, to walk, to draw, to sing. Uprightness and softness, that is to say one's integrity and responsiveness, should not be sacrificed to win a hollow momentary victory, or indeed ruin one's environment for monetary gain. For those who say that such ideas are beyond the original remit of T'ai Chi, a martial art that evolved over time originally in China, I say this: writing was first used, for many hundreds of years, as a means of accounting crops and goods. Wherever it evolved it was pretty much for counting beans. That it hasn't stayed that way is a cause for celebration rather than complaint. Sex evolved for simple organisms to reproduce. We don't argue that it should still only be used for that purpose. Similarly, that T'ai Chi has transformed and spread, to be such a vibrant and fertile part of so many people's lives is a great thing.
You do something and don't get pushed over.
So it worked, right?
Before I answer that I want to recommend a wonderful book: The Essential Writings of Wendell Berry, edited by Paul Kingsnorth called 'The World-Ending Fire'. How can the award-winning writings of an agrarian, a farmer from Kentucky, no less, be of interest and help to us in our ongoing T'ai Chi journey?
The connection is in how we define 'yield'. Very briefly, Berry has spent over 40 years farming and writing about it from the viewpoint of someone who lives on the land, sees its good health and protection as part of his own health, as well as his duty. After each harvest, or when livestock are taken from a field, he describes how the traditional small farmer does not just think in terms of the tonnage of crop or of meat that it yields, but in the condition of the soil, the richness of the wildlife, the possibility of habitat for beneficial species, the prevention of run-off and soil-erosion, indeed from the pleasure he or she takes in it: in sum, a complete picture requiring there to be good conditions for continuing to farm that land. This implies a duty of care to the wider landscape than just your farm, which seems such an old-fashioned idea to the bean-counting mind of the modern person, but makes perfect sense if you, for instance, hope your children may one day farm the same place. (Or if you actually give a hoot about anything other than a fast buck). Quick fixes based on technology or commerce cannot help a whole environment like the combined care of people integrated into and loving of their locale. If yield continues to be measured in tonnage alone, and not in the increased health, depth and richness of the world's soils, and the good lives of the people who live and farm there, then the prediction that our topsoil will be gone by the end of this century will come to pass.
What this seemingly unrelated topic has to do with T'ai Chi yielding, other than the strictly etymological link, is the negative effects of defining yield very narrowly. Perhaps we think in terms of 'did I have to move my feet or not' (which is the definition used in the frankly ridiculous sport of T'ai Chi Competition Pushing Hands). All the great fighting arts of the world (and all actual fights in real life) use stepping of some kind. It's great to practice fixed feet pushing hands and learn to stand your ground using softness, and this is an essential part of our training: but it is an exercise, which must lead to learning how to step. There is a limit to what standing in one place can allow, sometimes after we have turned, we must step, so as not to block, deflect or start wrestling with the opponent. (Note that blocking, deflecting, locking and controlling are the epitome of the arts of the Security Forces of any state, and some ordinary people also devote their time to learning these). It is also true that we should not step too soon to avoid the attack, as any good T'ai Chi player will just stick, adhere and follow: backing us up. I have pushed hands with many other people from diverse schools and styles over the years, and you can search this blog for my reports from Taichi Caledonia and Push Hands Hannover. When I watched two fixed feet folks wrestling over their tiny patch of ground by grabbing, hanging on and winding up in bizarre postures, I felt immensely sad, any beginner Sumo trainee could have moved them with one hand. T'ai Chi is not a great wrestling art! Why make it into one? Greco-Roman, Sumo or plain western wrestling are all vastly superior. It is like like trying to paint a mural with a watercolour brush. I know this strange hybridisation has happened to other martial arts which have become sports, such as Tae Kwon Do, so I should not be so surprised.
What makes all traditional styles of T'ai Chi so rich and so special? Too many things for me to list, but one is yielding, seen most often in the Form and push hands as Roll-Back. I have practised it in Chen Style, Sun Style and Yang Style so far, and all are equally as deep. One outreaches and connects to the push or incoming attack, really senses what is going on, stays upright and turns, not allowing the push to land on you, and yet somehow drawing it out of the person until they are unbalanced and either fall, retreat or stop, at which point the appropriate response can be made, without conscious decision making or recourse to a list of techniques. It takes years to be able to do this well and is as rewarding and frustrating to learn as any musical instrument.
If the answer to a problem such as 'we need more fuel to make electricity' is 'let's strip mine this mountain', or 'let's frack this valley in a National Park', then yes, when someone pushes you in T'ai Chi, or in life, deflect them any way you can so that you don't have to step. In fact, why not just kick them in the head, or better still break their arm? Then you definitely won't have to deal with them again, (maybe just their angry friends...) If you define successful problem solving in tiny, narrow terms, such as 'having yielded' as 'not having moved your foot', then what I am going to suggest won't be of interest to you. Defining problems and solutions in simplistic terms is the popular contemporary specialisation of an entire army of bureaucrats in every walk of life: medicine, education, agriculture, ecology, charities... you name it. Not seeing things as a whole, as interwoven, but choosing to see them as systems and machines, which behave in mechanistic ways, is a widespread mainly undiagnosed disease.
My suggestion is this: in terms of T'ai Chi yielding: a good yield has only occurred if what we gave back was proportional to what we received. Our posture at the end of a yield should be as upright as when we began, and remain as soft. We need to have received and not rejected the incoming energy, or tried to control it and make it go away. In many respects we need to get in the way, rather than out of the way. After yielding there needs to be no lingering discomfort or agitation (I call this 'residue') that prevents us from immediately joining with the next moment, push, person. Rather than lose our posture and wrangle with someone we should easily be able to 'hop like a sparrow' if uprooted, (which is a wonderful form of yielding, allowing us to be rooted and grounded a split second later, inches or feet from where we just were, ready to yield, push or issue straight away). After a push, however unexpected, we hope to be in as good a frame of mind and body as before it, if not better.
Interestingly, in Nassim Nicholas Taleb's terminology, the unexpected push could be termed a 'black swan event', and if we are merely strong or resilient, we may one day still be overpowered, in T'ai Chi that's like practising hard force all our years then finding at a certain age we just can't rely on our strength or speed any more. If we are week and fragile, and have never developed our centre-line and ability to turn, we will be prone to 'tofu T'ai Chi' or 'noodling', and eventually we will certainly be hard hit. However, if we are 'anti-fragile', we can actually be enlivened and energised by pushes, as we can by really engaging with the unexpected things life throws at us.
I hope I have interested the T'ai Chi practitioner in a broader appreciation of what denotes a good yield, inspired by what Wendell Berry suggests is a deeper way to appreciate what constitutes successful, sustainable farming. I am currently up in Scotland teaching the Aberdeenshire students, and we worked physically on all these things last night in the regular partner work session, resulting in some incredibly soft yields and some wonderful returns. Yield is 'what is given up': in the fully paradoxical nature of being totally empty in order to receive, and also completely full in order to give back. When I get home to my copies of the T'ai Chi Classics I will add the relevant quotes for the interested reader, as everything I have mentioned above is fully backed-up in the Classics. But for now, from memory: 'If after many years you still cannot neutralise a push, seek the defect in the legs and the feet'. Not: 'push them away harder', 'lean over and grab them' or 'try and make them move their foot then say you won'.
Much so-called practical T'ai Chi has no practicality outside the gold-fish-bowl of competition. Lists of techniques are no answer for life's, or the street's demands. To quote the Classics again: 'The principles are few, the permutations are endless'. The incredible yielding taught by Dr Chi, which I have felt independently in several totally unrelated students and grand-students of his, has been, without doubt, of greatest benefit to my life, up there with learning to read, to walk, to draw, to sing. Uprightness and softness, that is to say one's integrity and responsiveness, should not be sacrificed to win a hollow momentary victory, or indeed ruin one's environment for monetary gain. For those who say that such ideas are beyond the original remit of T'ai Chi, a martial art that evolved over time originally in China, I say this: writing was first used, for many hundreds of years, as a means of accounting crops and goods. Wherever it evolved it was pretty much for counting beans. That it hasn't stayed that way is a cause for celebration rather than complaint. Sex evolved for simple organisms to reproduce. We don't argue that it should still only be used for that purpose. Similarly, that T'ai Chi has transformed and spread, to be such a vibrant and fertile part of so many people's lives is a great thing.
12 July 2015
Photos from Sweden
 |
| Davina & Carmen |
 |
| Carmen & Anna |
 |
| Swimming companion |
 |
| My bedroom on the rocks |
 |
| Dawn view from the hut |
22 June 2015
Aberdeenshire Workshops 26-28 June
This month's Aberdeenshire workshops with Caroline are this coming
weekend. Great River students of any level are
particularly welcome to the
Saturday
sessions which this month are at Anneke and Neil's place near Finzean.
Friday at Balvack
7-10pm Dance
Saturday at Finzean
1-4pm Short Form, and related study
5.30-8.30pm Partnerwork
Sunday at Fetternear Hall then Balvack
1-4pm Weapons
5.30-8.30pm Long Form, Heartwork, One Posture
The price is £15 (concs available) per 3 hr session. Please bring food to share on Saturday and Sunday. Get in touch with your instructor if you need travel directions to any of the venues or feel free to contact me with any other questions.
All the dates for the 2015 workshops are here
Friday at Balvack
7-10pm Dance
Saturday at Finzean
1-4pm Short Form, and related study
5.30-8.30pm Partnerwork
Sunday at Fetternear Hall then Balvack
1-4pm Weapons
5.30-8.30pm Long Form, Heartwork, One Posture
The price is £15 (concs available) per 3 hr session. Please bring food to share on Saturday and Sunday. Get in touch with your instructor if you need travel directions to any of the venues or feel free to contact me with any other questions.
All the dates for the 2015 workshops are here
12 August 2014
Pushing Hands UK
Florence has sent me this link to an event she goes to which is held annually. I have not been myself, but it looks well run and coming from a good place. I'd welcome info from those who have been. I would go along myself but I shall be in deepest Dorset variously knapping flints, staring at the sea, eating crab and drinking mead.
11 September 2013
San Shou
New
Yang Style T'ai Chi San Shou class (The Dance)
This
is a new San Shou course. It is sometimes also known as the Yang
Style 88 Partner Form, The Dance of Vitality or simply The Dance. It
is the pinnacle of Yang Style T'ai Chi and is a superb arena for
exploring all the T'ai Chi principles, engage in real partner work,
learn countless applications and deepen our understanding of the art.
A minimum of 2 years' previous study is needed, please apply for
suitability. Each week we will progress with the solo A and B
interlocking forms, as well as putting them together, working on the
applications, variations and qualities of each movement. This will be
a long-term course. The Long Form is used as our 'warm up' each week,
and after the session there is the option of staying on for 1/2 hour
weapons training at no extra cost. It is also possible to arrive
early to take part in the intermediate class any time during 6-8pm,
where we cover Long Form, Short Form, warm ups, Chi Gung, push hands,
and so on. Traditional Jasmine Tea is served at 8pm when we move from
the more junior sessions to advance study.
Please feel free to get in touch with any queries. New students may join any week during October, and by arrangement in November.
10 September 2013
Hackney class tomorrow
...on 11th September will be next door in the Church rooms, 6-10pm as normal, due to a funeral event in the regular hall. I will now be taking the class, as my guest cannot now make it to the UK, we'll be especially looking at double pushing hands, so bring your questions!
08 March 2012
Double push hands video
As soon as I fully recover from this cold I will be making a little video clip to help the Gothenburg and other students with the basics of DPH. Sorry for the short delay.
06 March 2012
05 March 2012
Gothenburg weekend workshops
Thanks to Anna for organising a great couple of workshops and private lessons in Gothenburg this weekend. The venue was possibly the best suited to a T'ai Chi workshop that I have ever used: light, airy, a great floor (specially designed for dance), warm, with a kitchen, big table, changing area and a great atmosphere. I hope to take Mark there to teach in 2013. Thanks also to Davina for her excellent assistance and company. We covered quite a lot: basic posture, single then double push hands on all sides and the first of the changes, Wabu stepping, sticking, Front Heart Salutations and figure of eight warm ups. We also had a good look at the essential principles of Central Earth (upright posture, integrity), Ward-Off, Connection, Softness and stepping to the right place rather than losing any of these.
I plan to come back and teach in September and before then Anna will revise and teach some of what we covered, during the Summer by the coast, details to follow. Thanks to those who came along for their good spirits and hard work, apologies for occasionally breaking your brains... Well done Anna, Micke and Ulrik in the private lessons, we stormed some more of the Short Form, I was really happy with how it looked and felt. I look forward to seeing a few of the Swedish posse at the Weeklong Workshop.
As usual it was a pleasure to be in Sweden, not only because of the great fika.
I plan to come back and teach in September and before then Anna will revise and teach some of what we covered, during the Summer by the coast, details to follow. Thanks to those who came along for their good spirits and hard work, apologies for occasionally breaking your brains... Well done Anna, Micke and Ulrik in the private lessons, we stormed some more of the Short Form, I was really happy with how it looked and felt. I look forward to seeing a few of the Swedish posse at the Weeklong Workshop.
As usual it was a pleasure to be in Sweden, not only because of the great fika.
Looking at 'Push'
introducing double push hands
A short taster of the feel of the sessions, here we are showing a little Wabu.
26 October 2011
December
beginners T’ai
Chi workshops
With
Caroline Ross
New
and less experienced students, as well as all those studying Short
Form, are especially welcome to attend these two sessions on Saturday
3rd December 2011. Please bring a dish to share between
sessions at Balvack, near Monymusk.
2-5pm:
Short Form, warm ups, applications, questions.6.30-9.30pm: Partnerwork: sticking, push hands, sensitvity training, all levels catered for.
We will be recapping much of what Mark taught us in October at the workshop, including the dragon walk, one posture, connecting hands, the (new to most of us) fly-stepping circling partnerwork that we looked at, and anything else you need to revise or deepen.
There
will also be plenty of challenges for 'old hands' who come along!
Speak
to your instructor for details.
www.greatrivertaichi.co.uk
Flyers are available for instructors, let me know if you need one emailing to you.
20 October 2011
Thursday class
Just off to do this...
Thanks to Mithila for thse pictures from her last visit. If you were wondering, we were practising kick and the response pull-down from The Dance and also some slipping double push hands.
06 October 2011
North London Class
North London T'ai Chi Classes run on Wednesday evenings at Hackney Round Chapel on Lower Clapton Road, the entrance is at 1D Glenarm Road to the right of the building as you look at it. The class runs from 6-7pm for beginners with optional partnerwork until about 8pm. More senior students come from 7-9pm where we study Short and Long Forms, applications, etc. After tea, and until 10pm, we study Sabre Form and Sword Form. I can't think of a better space in which to learn T'ai Chi. The class costs £10 (£6 concs) per week, payable in six week termly blocks, or £12 / £8 paid weekly. As ever, if any of my Scottish students are in town, or any T'ai Chi Centre students are free, then you are welcome to just come along. In January 2007 Steven Moore asked me to teach this class when he emigrated to Israel and the class has grown and developed naturally. T'ai Chi classes of our particular Yang Style lineage had been running in this venue for 10 years or so before I started, and there is still a great mixture of newer and more experienced students who come along. New beginners may turn up at any class at 6pm to meet the teacher and busk along for an evening. If they wish to join they may like to book a private lesson with me or one of the assistants to catch up with principles and basics so that they can take full advantage of the classes. Experienced T'ai Chi players are welcome any week at 7pm to discuss our method and see if the class is for them. All my students are also welcome to drop in at my teacher's school The T'ai Chi Centre in South London.
This is an update of the previously published 2007 post.
03 October 2011
23 November 2009
pushes and pulls
Just off for a 121 with Mark now, with lots of questions about Sword and Dance for this weekend's workshops in Aberdeenshire. I am really looking forward to coming up. Right now I have quite a tickly cough and a cold, but I am hoping to be less snuffly at the weekend. I wish I could get to the Thursday night practice sessions in Inverurie when I come up, but my work does not allow it. I am glad that it is starting a bit later, so that all those who travel or have late jobs can get along to it. Also, it is good that the rota means each week is really different; partnerwork at the end rather than the start, for instance. This can also help those who come later not to miss the vital push hands work.
The last 2 months have been very busy for me as I have taken on arts work to meet a specific financial deadline. The extra work is fun and rewarding, but has often meant I have only been able to get to the second half of Mark's classes, for form, San Shou, silk reeling, etc. Just pushing hands 3-4 days a week for over and hour each time with my colleagues is such an essential part of my learning. Two months 'reduced service', even with the push hands I do at my own class and elsewhere, has certainly showed. I was delighted to return to it this weekend and last. So, here's a word from recent experience to all Great River students, whether instructors in their own right or not... even if it means skipping some other cool thing, having a packed dinner rather than a meal, or not popping to the shops that day... don't let your push hands training slip! It's the heart and guts of our T'ai Chi, without it we are paper tigers.
The last 2 months have been very busy for me as I have taken on arts work to meet a specific financial deadline. The extra work is fun and rewarding, but has often meant I have only been able to get to the second half of Mark's classes, for form, San Shou, silk reeling, etc. Just pushing hands 3-4 days a week for over and hour each time with my colleagues is such an essential part of my learning. Two months 'reduced service', even with the push hands I do at my own class and elsewhere, has certainly showed. I was delighted to return to it this weekend and last. So, here's a word from recent experience to all Great River students, whether instructors in their own right or not... even if it means skipping some other cool thing, having a packed dinner rather than a meal, or not popping to the shops that day... don't let your push hands training slip! It's the heart and guts of our T'ai Chi, without it we are paper tigers.
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