Tai Chi

I have serious students. This is an incredible gift to any teacher. Students who share the teacher’s passion for the art encouragethe teacher to be better, to teach better, to take their questions, concerns and requirements seriously.It means they’re an active part of the class, not simply passive, empty vessels.How lucky I am to have…

This morning I had my annual appointment at the VA clinic in Crown Point; afterward, I went straight to class.  Since I got there a bit early and my route took me past it, I paid a visit to the MT Tai Chi studio and its founder, Marc Troop.  For having taught here at Essential…

“Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.” – Cato the Elder“Where do they think we’re gonna find that much salt out here?” – Scipio Africanus (probably) We’ve spoken about “martial” and “civil” as distinct concepts in tai chi, both in this blog and in class.  It’s time to expand on these concepts and lay out what we…

Few people think tai chi looks like this; it seldom does, except when it needs to. Earlier this week in class I got asked about “fajin.”  I was glad to receive the question – it’s about time we discussed it. An earlier blog post (“Why So Slow?” 19 April 2021) discusses why we go slow…

17 August 2023 For reasons sufficient to myself, I created an I Ching hexagram yesterday to settle a question related to a personal matter.  The question and the matter is unremarkable – it’s related to family and is irrelevant to the topic of this post.  More important is something I read when consulting the I…

September 21st 2022  One of the difficulties with many concepts like “healing” is the fuzziness of the term itself.  Some people think of it as a spiritual thing.  My pastor certainly does; then again, he ought to.  Others regard the term as applying principally to recovery from stress or trauma.  Still others refer simply to…

21 June 2022 If you haven’t heard me say “There are no secrets in tai chi,” it’s not because I’ve never said it in class.  It’s true.  There aren’t any – at least in Yang style.  Everything there is to know about it is widely available, sitting right there waiting for you to lay hold…

“My Sifu has said, when asked, that our best “apparatus” for training is our training partner’s arms, legs, head and torso. He asks us to consider how much money it would cost to build a training dummy as unpredictable and obnoxious as the average T’ai Chi student.”– Frank Chai 1 June 2022 The inspiration for…

12 May 2022 Tai chi as a traditional martial art is similar in many ways to every other martial art.  We use the energy in an opponent’s action against him – this is no different than jujitsu or aikido.  We have blocks, punches and kicks – so do hapkido, karate, xingyi quan and the Shaolin…