Try standing in front of a mirror with your arms lightly out and palms up
Then open the hands as far as you can.
Relax and let them spring back – can you feel the spring in your hands?
That is an internal feeling
What you can see by looking at you hands in the mirror is the external that an observer sees.
Now repeat by opening as far as you can – but this time think to yourself “ stay open” and direct your intention to your hands – they stay open – or will with a little practice – and without noticable effort.
Then simply allow the hands to close again and reflect that you have controlled your hands by intention not effort.

So here you have demonstrated external movement from  muscle effort with internal feeling and mental intent so you can understand that the external presentation is a reflection of the internal process, but not a definitive one since we cannot directly observe what the other person feels mentally and physically. However as our own experience grows we develop greater understanding of what lies within the movements we observe. Like reading a water course by looking at the patterns on the water – our experience of the depths and shallows is coupled with our knowledge of currents and wind effects on the water surface to gauge what is going on below where we cannot actually see.

So as students we have some very powerful tools at our disposal but they usually need refining.
We can look at our teacher and see the external choreography of their movements
We can sense the internal feeling of our own movement and relate it to the movement of others.
We can listen carefully to what teachers say and use our experience of language to interpret.

When we look we interpret what we see in light of our own internal experience
When they demonstrate we get an enhanced picture in much higher definition which allows us insight to their internal process
When they describe what they are doing then we can relate it to what we ourselves experience and notice how they compare as a way of interpreting the words used.
When we practice we can adjust the movement by changing our intention or the feeling we wish to express eg relaxed, sinking, soft, hard, fluid, extended, light, springy and so on.

I am really looking forward to our next one-day seminar in October covering Tai Chi related exercises and meditation – with the added benefit of Alexander Technique. The mix of meditation and movement combines to create internal awareness and understanding of our body usage – this seminar will take time to explore how we can develop this mind-body link.

Date: Sunday 19th October 2014. Time: 10.00am to 4.00pm

Venue: The Letchworth Centre for Healthy Living, Rosehill Hospital,
Hitchin Road, Letchworth, Hertfordshire, SG6 3NA
Cost: £60.

To book: telephone The Letchworth Centre on 01462 678804

Here’s an idea – think of yourself as a committee – and your body and your mind and your spirit
as sub-committees.

This structure is like a team or a shoal of fish/flock of birds – but unlike any of these you do not
have the option to “drop” one of the team – they are with you for life – so the only option is to
grow the team from within. You cannot rely on a few star players you must get the whole team
home. So you focus instead on supporting the weak players, guiding them and giving them
every opportunity to grow and learn how to co-ordinate with the rest of the team – how to work
in sync, in rhythm and in the same direction as the rest – unless they do then you remain
unconnected and your energy is scattered like a tug-o-war team who doesn’t practice.

So you invest in loss – because that gives you the best opportunity for the feedback which can
show you what is not working and why and allow you to work out how to fix it.
It is the power of teamwork that generates Chi and the skill gained from consistent practice –
your Kung Fu – that enables us to develop it.

The forms and the exercise and the repetition – the experimentation, the mindful observation,
the push hands and the partner work are all tools along the way to help our team grow. So as
one player gets weaker perhaps with old age or illness – the team structure and operation gets
stronger to compensate – the linkage gets more resilient and tougher, the demands on each
player become less as the structure becomes more integrated and focused, and more flexible to
external forces. In a similar way that if you have a chain with weak links there would be no point
in further strengthening the already strong links – you instead first rebuild the weak links to
make the whole chain strong.

So in Tai Chi we work on our bodies and our physical systems using exercises that give us the
opportunity to develop our tissues and co-ordination – which indirectly means that we also work
on our mind and spirit. We work on balance, sensitivity, co-ordination, elasticity, timing,
endurance, connection – and on understanding the experiences of those other Tai Chi players
who choose to pass on their experiences.

Like a good team manager our mind is just one player – we can use the conscious intellect in
observing, researching, learning, nudging, encouraging, cajoling, threatening and nurturing. Too
strong and it takes over and micro-manages – it does not allow our subconscious to work and
so we do not become “natural” in our Tai Chi – but remain robotic and uncoordinated – external
– always catching up, always too late however fast we try to move, always with weaknesses
easily seen and exploited by other Tai chi practitioners who have got their team together.
Worse – over use of the intellect can send us off on many a wild goose chase – thinking that we
know what we are doing – and actually not. This over use can hold us back in our progress by
sending us off in many wrong directions. The intellect is a powerful team player when it works
correctly – indeed it may be the chairman of the board sometimes but it is not the managing
director and all the other directors as well.
For example the intellect can create virtual models, visualisations, exercises and patterns to
help in developing the body and spirit. Just as mine created this article which attempts to
transmit part of my intellectual model and actually therefore forms part of the model itself.

Our spirit plays in the team too – too strong and it takes over pushing us too hard and
demanding we win all the time or just as bad perhaps defending us when not necessary – too
weak and we just take the easy road or don’t even try at all. Too much spirituality and we can
get lost in the “airy-fairyness” of it all and lose track of the real world. Learning when and how to
support the team – when to lead and when to take a back seat is vital for the spirit.

In a very real sense we are the whole committee – from our microbes to our concepts – from
our cells to our structural tensegrity and our conscious/unconscious learning and control
systems. Our outward presentation and inner experience are a complete melding of all these
elements of ourselves – we are the “group think” of the committee/team – our mitochondria,
memories, religious beliefs and physical abilities etc. – if there is inner conflict then it is like
ministers briefing against their own government – the whole structure begins to break down and
quite quickly even the house keeping (civil service) is affected – so we are constantly
negotiating consensus and to stay “on message”.

If we have too strong a leader i.e. any one member controls the committee for too long then the
structure becomes unbalanced. So at all levels studying Tai Chi becomes a quest for balance
and how to allow change from one mode to another – as sometimes one aspect predominates
and then steps down and takes a passive role. We learn to become congruent and to trust
ourselves – sure we still make mistakes – hopefully less as we go on – but we retain our
personal integrity.

So if we allow ourselves to “relax and sink” then we can let the committee work properly and
ultimately more powerfully as a team than as a loose collection of individual parts each fighting
to dominate.

I was intrigued by a story on the radio recently of a western freediver who went to learn from Japanese pearl divers – whose only advice was ” get in the water and dive”

It reminded me of the only advice I got while in the Chen village ” relax and sink, practice the form”

While it does not appear that simple from our western deconstructionist viewpoint – it actually is – as I am finding yet again with my golf. In a lesson today with my coach I found that I need to relax and sink my right hip and my right shoulder. So there is an element of learning which bits need to relax and sink – but only because they are the tense bits in the first place – if you just relax and sink everything then you can move naturally.

There comes a point where you have to make it your own – as my Karate teacher Vince Morris used to say “wear your Karate like your own suit of clothes”.

I more and more appreciate Chen Wangting’s nickname of Chen the Tablet – so named for his upright and no doubt relaxed and sinking posture.

The class is open to existing students, plus anyone with previous experience of Tai Chi.
The program will cover:

• Tai Chi Exercises
• Silk reeling
• Chi Kung standing
• Chen Laojia form (old style 74 postures)
• Possibly push hands if the group wishes and time allow

Dates: Tuesday August 5th and Thursday August 7th 2014
Time: 10am – 4pm each day
Venue: The Letchworth Centre for Healthy Living, Rosehill Hospital,
Hitchin Road, Letchworth, SG6 3NA
Cost: £100 for two days, £60 for one day.
To book and pre-pay: call The Letchworth Centre on 01462 678804
For further information please call me on 01462 621970 
Mobile: 07860 218334. E-mail: [email protected] 

Judy and I are once again running the Celebrating Spirals in Tai Chi and Alexander Technique seminar at The Letchworth Centre for Healthy Living on Sunday 13th July –  this was a really fun session last year and we look forward to meeting some old friends and some new ones again this year.

Spirals are not just fun – they are healthy and natural – our joints, muscles and vital organs benefit significantly when we move in spirals, especially when we spiral around a lengthening spine with a beautifully poised head. Our muscles are stretched and toned, especially the abdominals, and our organs are massaged and oxygenated – likewise spiral movement enables us to utilise the elastic properties of the fascia within our bodies and to develop a light and limber resilience to our body usage.

For more information please see here.

Update – please note Luton Classes are now held at Chaul End Community Centre, for details please see here.

I am delighted to be starting regular Tai Chi classes in Luton from September 3rd at the Hightown Community Sports & Arts Centre – this in response to 4 existing students from the Luton area who would like to practice more often!
The classes will be suitable for beginners with a range of Tai Chi and Chi Kung exercises plus a short form of the basic Chen style routine.

Chen style Tai Chi Chuan or Taijiquan is valued for health, relaxation, personal development and martial arts. It is believed to be the original codified version of Tai Chi and is considered suitable for all ages. Chen-style focuses on
softness with calm relaxed movement, balance, good posture and a quiet mind. Developing awareness of inner body feelings and of mental/emotional states is seen as an important aspect. Please see www.taichiluton.org  for more information.

I have often come across the suggestion ( originally in Karate ) that ” you should train with only one teacher” – but have found that actually all the teachers I have trained with have had many teachers themselves, indeed the really good ones have actively sought out  other teachers and I have come to the conclusion that it is actually quite simple – train with one teacher consistently until you have enough experience and insight to understand what you are going to look for – then find other teachers and other styles. This may be part time – say for a few seminars, or it may be in parallel with your existing Tai Chi or other martial arts classes, perhaps you may travel to other countries occasionally and learn there.

The point is you have to have sufficient ability first – then you can go out and get a different perspective. If you only ever train with one person then you only get one perspective – martial arts is such a huge area that one perspective is not enough to understand this multi-dimensional subject. This is true, I would suggest, in other areas as well – such as my hobby of golf – at least two perspectives on a subject at allows stereo depth vision – a triangulation as it were.

If you come to the conclusion that your original teacher – or one of the others particularly suits you then you have learned something about yourself and are in a position to make an informed choice about your way forward.

My thanks to the publication – “Into Mountains, Over Streams – Journal of Internal Arts and Culture” for republishing one of my articles “Body Mapping Chi, & Muscle Power” – more than my article itself the journal is well worth a look as it covers a wealth of material on healing, internal practices, meditation etc.