Skip to main content

Needles in Cotton

 This morning,  in my qigong class,  I introduced the classic t'aiji image  -- a needle in cotton -- that like so much of t'aiji and qigong, is delightful and mysterious.  What it signifies to me is  -- is nothing less than becoming t'ai chi.   what I mean by that is that you will change and in a magnificent direction.   One day -- after years of  waving your arms around gently and stepping firmly and turning your waist  as instructed,   one day,  you will feel this odd new ... connection.   Your breath enters and leaves, you might feel a tingling in your wrists and suddenly your limbs are weightless.   It's so hard to convey.  I feel I"m not succeeding and I'm not sure that this writer,  Danny Dreyer,   does the job much better but I"m going to let him try.      I'm excerpting from his book,  T'ai Chi Walking,  to better explain it

“NEEDLE IN COTTON: GATHER TO YOUR CENTER
AND LET GO OF ALL ELSE
A fundamental principle in ChiWalking that has been taken from T’ai Chi is Needle in Cotton. In the practice of T’ai Chi, all sound movement has this principle at its source. The phrase needle in cotton depicts the image of a needle resting in the middle of a ball of cotton. It is an image that a T’ai Chi practitioner should remember while practicing this ancient martial art. The needle represents the thin straight line running vertically through the rotational axis of the body, along the spine. In T’ai Chi, one practices gathering energy (chi) to this centerline and initiating all movement from this centerline.
In ChiWalking, your spine is the needle and your shoulders and arms, hips, and legs are the cotton. The more energy you gather in toward your center—your needle—the more you must let go of holding any energy in your extremities and imagine them to be as light and airy as cotton. ”

Excerpt From: Danny Dreyer. “ChiWalking.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/chiwalking/id381481397
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

 In my classes I like to introduce the many Qigong sequences I've learned,  mostly from a fascinating teacher I studied with for a few years,  up in Stone Ridge,  NY -- Hawkes, he calls himself.   A powerful student of the internal arts,  Qigong,  t'aiji as well as Shamanism.  Over the years I learned one after the other,  and we would then alternate,  a few months with one,  then on to the next,  in cycles -- the  Eight Taoist Moves,  the Ten Daoists,  and to one of the most beautiful, and most well known  of these,  Eight Pieces of Brocade I've since found a version that was very moving, demonstrated by Laoshi Faye Yip, now teaching in London I believe.  While I haven't incorporated all of her style and form,  I've adopted, and now teach Laoshi Fay'sopening,  the last move,  as well as a flower-like 6th move, a punch with amazing spiraling of the wrist at the end.   This is a ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ma Wang Dui__Health qigong

 I'm jumping into the middle of my stories from a recent trip to China.   My plans of posting here daily or thereabouts were dashed for some reason.   Maybe it was seeing and experiencing so much that was new, or traveling in a large group -- meeting new people in our long bus rides.   Or maybe it was getting up often at 6 for breakfast  on  "command"    Late in the afternoon the day before, someone -- usually our logistical leader, Lili -- would bellow at the head of the bus,  '  7 am in the lobby and we'll find a place for Qigong/t'ai chi!'  Or      'Breakfast at 6:30.   Be ready to board the bus at 7!'      It was a whirlwind trip of fantastic sights and encounters that I'm still processing.  And it was high energy, early mornings, late nights and activity and walking throughout the day.   But I feel responsible for notating the outstanding things relating to t'ai chi and so here goes ...
Post a Comment
Read more
 It has been more than a year since I've stopped in at my blog.   Even I, the tech neanderthal, understand that blogs have been superseded and replaced by things like instagram and substack. But I persist.   Wanting to have a place where written descriptions and little stories are equal to the images.  So stop here if like me, you like to read about t'ai chi and qigong, learn about what's going on in our classes, and in our lives... This is the Youtube link to mawandui -- done as a montage of different settings in China (I'm pretty sure we're in China for all of these settings).  See master Tary doing the same thing in the previous post.  Both are really good .     No explanation.  Just the pure art.    Follow along and enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/ playlist?list= PLung5sxUaSPgjWjUdOW- HxpSicE8WjNdQ Here's a photo from my trip to China, a little more than a year ago.   This is the "fan form" which I'll write about  in my ...
Post a Comment
Read more