The Restless Raven

I have always wanted to believe in magic. The idea of a mystical power that can be seen and manipulated by some wizard.

My first inclination on strange occurrences is in fact always magic first, then slowly the analytical mind battles its way to the forefront of my brain and starts to break it apart.

Classic example… I was out in the back yard with my roommate and on the ground there was a round blue hairy mass shaped like an egg on the ground.

“Oh!! An alien egg!!!”  I had exclaimed.

“Umm…. No”, my roommate uttered with a raised eyebrow. “That is a rotten lemon.”

I guess Tai Chi has that appeal to me. I feel like I am in the realm of wizards  who have spent centuries toiling away and the hidden mysteries of chi and the human body. Passing their knowledge down the best they can to the people that will listen and practice.

But it’s getting lost. So few practice the art anymore it seems, lots of the masters are gone, the demands of the modern world prevent delving in to the depths of the art as far as some of the old masters. The cultural revolution led to the destruction and deaths of thousands of the old masters. Only a handful survived,  and the ones that did went in to hiding.

The knowledge lost makes me a little bit sad. I suppose that is part of the reason I want to focus so intently on it. I could spend my whole life learning it,  and barely scratch the surface of what has been learned. Most of the Tai chi masters spent their lives studying multiple martial arts by the time they took up Tai chi. I have done nothing of the sort.

What happens when there aren’t any more masters? The knowledge learned in Tai chi can’t be held in books, all books can do is show you how to practice. Only the people who have that passion for it will uncover the knowledge. But, maybe that is the way it’s supposed to be.

Only a rare dedicated few become magicians.

Here are some links on the cultural revolution if you are interested:

http://www.history.com/topics/cultural-revolution

http://people.howstuffworks.com/chi-kung-exercises2.htm

One of the things I enjoy the most about Tai Chi is that its teachings can be applied to almost every situation in daily life. Not only philosophically, but in physicality as well. I have been adapting it and stealing practice in almost every action during the day;

While on the bus, I practice redistributing the inertia from the starts, stops and turns through my root structure (IE, I bus surf). I have gotten really good at standing sideways (facing the side, the usual power stance) and can almost go the full 30 min without moving my feet at all. I am slowly easing myself in the standing in a forward horse stance (Facing toward the front of the bus) but I have found that it requires a lot more effort and it wears me out a lot quicker. Soon though!

While at work, I am fortunate enough to have a standing desk. So I focus on rooting and keeping my attention on my dantian. I am now standing most of the day and the moments I do sit I almost immediately start to get restless. Makes the days I am exhausted really hard :).

While walking, I am always focusing on extending through my spine and relaxing my shoulders. Letting them float down, and keeping my lower back flat and full while relaxing the hips. The shoulders are the most tense spot of my body, all of my stress goes straight there and pulls them up to my ears.

There are a million little ways to incorporate practice\exercise in to daily life. I have always held the belief that exercise should be a continuous thing, not something you cram in to a really intense 30 minutes of the day. Bodies are meant to move, its how they find their greatest vitality.

Been a couple days since I have posted. So, a quick catch-up on the last couple!

Friday Practice:

Met at the rec center with a couple of students this morning, still working out the kinks of how best to utilize this time. Things are settling in to form practice\discussion and next week we will start doing regular push-hands. Short day today as I had to get to work to utilize the few hours we had before we had our company outing.

• 24 Form x2
• 20 minutes of silk reeling

Saturday Practice:

Alcohol is rough…add a splash of hot tub in the mix and it multiplies it 10 fold. Only got a couple hours of sleep, but managed to drag myself out of bed for our early morning cleaning of the studio before all of the classes started. The senior\certificate students will be showing up early Saturdays to take care of that from now on to ease some of the responsibilities of our teacher. Both of the new students received keys to the studio today. Now him and I can enter the studio when ever we want. Quite a great honor bestowed upon us.

There are now 4 senior students at the studio who have committed themselves to the practice and a great community so far! I am really excited to see how things progress for all of us and the studio!

• 1 hr Studio Cleaning
• 1.5 hr dynamic Qigong
• 1.5 hour 24 Form Review
• 2 hours push hands class

Sunday Practice:

Oh….Thats today!

Got to bed rather late again, and still some lingering after effects from the hangover. Mostly just sluggish and antisocial :). Towards the end of classes attention was starting to wander, which was disappointing as we had our first disciple\certificate student class. We started going over the form in extreme depth, one of the steps in getting us to the point where we can feel confident in the form to be able to evaluate and correct it while teaching early students.

• 1.5 hours primordial qigong (ending in 15 min standing mediation)
• 1.5 hours beginning form (24) practice
• 1 hour 24 from breakdown