Though Tai-Chi was and is primarily a martial art it's beauty is that because it places so much inital emphasis on relaxation and intellegent movement it has lots of benifits outside of it's origional remit as a method of self defense. I can honestly saying that I'm fitter, stronger and more flexible now in my mid 30's than I was when I took up Tai-Chi in my early 20's. Am I ageless, able to run up walls and blessed with a perfect body befret of disease and postural imbalances? Far from it (yes you can stop laughing at the back there) but if I compare the way I move and feel now to that of my 20 year self it feels like I'm thinking of a different person.
And I'm still learning. That's important, everytime I come back to The Form or I go through a basic exercise I find something I haven't noticed before, some nuance that shed new light or takes me down another ally. I'm proud to say that in Tai-Chi I know no masters, I just know many endlessly enthusitic students. Some have been walking the path far longer than me and like to share their expierence and others are just taking their first tentative steps on their own journey, one that will last as long as they do.
That's what I've got the most out of Tai-Chi, that for me is it's main health benfit, an activity with seemingly bottomless riches which will inform and inspire me and many others until we cease to be.
For those wanting more concrete information on the health benfits of Tai-Chi then the articles below make fro interesting reading.
http://www.osteoporosistreatment.co.uk/tai-chi-prevent.php
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/tai-chi/SA00087
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070323105002.htm
http://www.williamccchen.com/Medical%20Studies.htm
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Saturday, March 28
Great article
by
Adam
on Sat 28 Mar 2009 06:42 PM GMT
Good article about martial arts training by Matt Thornton of the Straight Blast Gym. Also has a lot of relavence to life my previous post.
http://www.straightblastgym.com/newbook.htm
Expectation
by
Adam
on Sat 28 Mar 2009 06:38 PM GMT
Probably the hardest thing to deal with when we are in any new situation is our expectation. You run into it in many forms in Tai-Chi, when you first start a class there's your expectation of what a class will be and how a teacher should act, if you stay with it long enough to begin to teach there is the expectation of what your students should be doing and how you are teaching them and finally, the worst one of all, there's the expectations you have of yourself.
The thing is none of these expectations will ever play out in reality exactly how you think they should, because at the end of the day they are just stories in our heads, stories about the reality of our experience not the experience itself. This is why we can tie ourselves in knots trying to make the world match the one in our heads, because we've essentially got it the wrong way around, we are trying to make reality fit our ideas when really we should make our ideas fit our reality. This is not to say we shouldn't have goals or aims, goals and aims are good. They give us a focus, they make us channel our energy into something constructive instead of letting it dissipate in too many directions. However before we can set ourselves a realistic and achievable goal we have to have a realistic and non judgemental idea of our starting position. In Tai-Chi there are four main 'energies' that we deal with, Ting-Jing or listening energy, Dong Jing or understanding energy, Hua Jing or neutralizing energy and Fa Jing or emitting energy. Of the four energies the first two are the ones appropriate here. Ting-Jing could also be translated as sensitivity, it is not listening with the ears but rather developing a keen kenisthological sense of our own body/mind and how they operate as a unit. It is trained in Tai-Chi first in solo exercises and The Form and then expanded in partner exercises, as the Tai-Chi maxim goes 'first understand yourself and then understand others'. You first learn to listen to your own movements and responses and then extend that sensitivity outwards to understand anothers movement and responses, looking inward to learn how to look outward. From Ting-Jing comes Dong-Jing or understanding, once you can listen you begin to understand and the more you understand the more you can listen. This understanding however must be 'rooted' in concrete experience and trial and error, and this leads us back to the beginning of the article, we can never have understanding if we do not have listening. Our expectations, our hopes and dreams can never be realistically achievable if they are not grounded in shifting nature of our lives. |
Welcome to the blog of Adam Lammiman. I teach Tai-Chi in the Minehead area of West Somerset, I'm also a yoga teacher with the British Wheel of yoga, practicing in a style heavily influenced by the teaching of Vanda Scaravelli and finally I'm qualified in Hollistic Massage with the Bristol School of Massage and Bodywork a member of the MTI. The aim of this blog is share my passion for Tai-Chi, Martial Arts, Yoga and Bodywork. This will include links to stuff I think people will find interesting as well as my own writing. I did keep an earlier blog here: http://www.donotthinkofablueelephant.co.uk/ but I've let that fall by the wayside. Feel free to have a look around there though some of my opinions have changed (which they tend to do if you keep growing) but I still like some of the content. |
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