The Aberdeenshire Autumn workshop with Mark will be at Fetternear Hall 21st - 24th October, followed by 121s with Mark. There will be more details nearer the time: please let Paolo know if you want to book a 121.
Dates for the summer workshop in London are expected to be confirmed soon.
Mark is teaching in Scotland this week.
Class resumes on 14th March.
Beginners are welcome to join 7-8.15pm.
New beginners are welcome to join our long term Tuesday evening group held in the main hall at Holy Trinity Church Hall, 7-8.15pm. The class costs £15, come along at 7pm, just wear loose comfortable clothes and soft shoes or trainers. You can experience for yourself the mind and body health benefits of this practice. No need to call in advance, just turn up any Tuesday in February 2023.
This episode of Just One Thing with Michael Mosley has a good summary of the health benefits of T'ai Chi.
Mark needs to attend to family matters in the North of England so classes will resume both in person and online classes one whole week late. Teaching begins 16th January. Thanks for your understanding.
The dates of the Aberdeenshire Spring Workshop with Mark have now been confirmed.
Due to unavailability of the hall on the Monday and Tuesday, it will be a slightly different arrangement from last October, starting on the Friday afternoon rather than the usual Saturday.
Friday 3rd March to Sunday 5th March 2pm - 9.30pm(ish) 3-day workshop at Fetternear Hall
Monday 6th to Wednesday 8th 1 to 1 lessons
Thursday 9th 2pm - 9.30pm at Monymusk Hall. An afternoon of weapons, followed by a leftside class after the food break.
Please contact Paolo if you'd like to book a 1 to 1 with Mark, or are interested in attending the workshops.
It's almost 10pm and I have just spent 3 hours going back over almost 18 years of this blog, saving some photos, writing, quotes and links that I have been meaning to gather together for quite some while. I was not expecting to be so moved by seeing all our faces getting younger by the minute, as I scrolled back to when I started this blog in 2005, three years after I officially started teaching T'ai Chi.
If you are reading this, and know me from classes, whether very well, or just for a brief time, then I send you my warmest good wishes and hope that this finds you well and well-loved. How incredible it has been to immerse myself in memories of the wider T'ai Chi family by looking through this blog in its entirety for the every first time. There was the news that I was inviting my teacher to come and teach my students at Drumblair Lodge, Aberdeenshire, in the Winter of 2005-6. Wonderful to know that many of you still practise and teach what you have been learning all these years. This makes me so happy.
I recently heard back from Megan, who used to study with Mark a decade ago, and who remembered me as 'always being there'. Indeed! It was good to be able to share lots of what is in the school's Dropbox, so that she can practice at home, now she is far away. Every year someone drops in at Mark's who used to study with John Kells, as happened last week. Mark told me how relieved and at home the student felt being in his class.
There are so many people I miss, some moved away, some left, some passed on. Everybody left an impression. Some of my old students now study with Mark or Kevin, others elsewhere, others no longer practise. For those that do, I hope that T'ai Chi brings you a still point in your lives. Since the pandemic stopped me teaching in person in March 2020, I have only taught online, and currently I do not teach at all. After 20 years, it was a good time to take a break. Now, nature, writing, teaching craft and making art take up much of my time, but Central Earth is still fundamental. I am waiting for a dear relative to have a place I can stay in London in the near future, and then I will be able to come and study with Mark at Tuesday and Wednesday classes sometimes, with a quiet, safe place to stay, (which is essential for me, since last year's uprooting events). I plan to be at the November workshop if I can find someone who can put me up.
I had forgotten how much we had all shared here on this blog, news, poems, classes, photos, comings and goings, births and deaths. I intend to leave this blog here, as long as Google leaves Blogger here for free, I guess. If you'd like to be in touch, my email address hasn't ever changed, so you can find me if you want to. In the meantime I can feel it will soon be time to wend my way back to T'ai Chi classes, though probably not teaching in person. I am going to help Mark record an online course, and see how that goes. I may also do a short one for all the chi kung I teach, as it has been so helpful to my friends with long Covid, which was a bit if good news recently.
I have spent at least 20 years in rooms with people, wonderful people, whether for T'ai Chi, art, or before that, a decade of music indoors in studios. It feels like a combination of time outdoors, family time, and private time is still what calls me at the moment, for a bit longer. So if I don't see you in person very soon, but you are one of the excellent people I have had the pleasure of just seeing scrolling back through this blog, then may I wish you a very fruitful autumn and peaceful winter. Warmest greetings to you from stormy Bournemouth,
Caro.
All students are welcome to join Mark at the regular Twickenham venue from 26-18th November, 2022. Cost is £50 per day, sessions run from 2-9pm with an hour's break for food. Get in touch with Mark if you have any questions.
If anyone in South London knows they are going to all three days and could put me up for the period of the workshop, please do get in touch, I would be very grateful (and happy to pay!) Caro.
From Saturday Mark will be in Aberdeenshire teaching the autumn workshops, followed by 121s with all those who booked one. If you'd like to join Mark, give him a ring, there are still places.
Wishing a good workshop for all who go.
