tai chi in park slope

I was honored to be invited to present examples of Qi Gong to an audience of New York City's Hispanic and Chinese-American communities.    It was sponsored by the non-profit SOMOS , an interesting forward thinking collective of MDs seeking to improve healthy life style and outcomes for the poorer residents of our community.     At the end of a scrumptious vegan lunch,  I took the floor and invited everyone to stand up next to their tables  and learn the basic posture, and more.  I was surprised that the most avid participants was a sizable group of children! They caught on like lightening,  unlocking their joints as instructed and grasping my exhortations to ,  experience the contrasting yin and yang in their bodies.    And of course a few adults dared to stand up and try it too.  

A serious question:  Is there a t'ai chi exercise for when you're on hold with tech support? We've all been there.  It's the chore that you probably put behind cleaning out the fridge or changing the sheets.  You maybe procrastinate. But you know,  on all levels, that you can't really put it off too long.  You really need the use of your printer/cellphone/cable TV.  The "it will wait" conversation with yourself won't be believable.  You need help. So you take the plunge.  And right at the get-go, you're probably placed on hold.  You may be subjected to a form of modern muzak.  To protect yourself, you put your phone on speaker mode and attempt to pay some bills. Then someone -- after perhaps 15 minutes -- answers the phone.  A real human human being, albeit following a tightly written script.  But you're thrilled.  And you begin.  You're blithely pressing this button or that,  as per the tech rep's ins...

                              Children playing,  automatically find that relaxed and alert posture.  How do we get back there?  As an adult,  it will take conscious attention, thinking about it, and silently asking those top neck vertebrae to align themselves in an upright stack.                               I try whenever I can remember to practice the tall, lifted head, when I'm walking the dog,  or just walking...whenever I think of it.

Again, at the risk or being repetitive, class, let me remind you, "Imagine a long thread arising from the crown of your head and running up to the sky. "  and adding something to the effect that this is the position your head should take in taiji.  It should rise up from your spine and sit regally at the top of the last vertebra ,  aspiring to literally great heights. I must say something along these lines once every class.   And no-one minds.  Necks for a moment seem to straighten and extend a little bit,  eyes gazing calmly straight ahead,  yet  within the next few minutes, or less,  they scrunch back down.   The eyes follow,  seeming to search the floor as the student tries to get the foot in the right position for the next move.    We joke -- is there an uneven floorboard, or even a dangerous crevasse you might fall into?  (The floors in my studio at Spoke the Hub are  those sprung wood dance floors with n...

Standing with head gently erect, eyes straight ahead.  Why is it so hard?    Wherever you take a t’ai chi class,  from whichever teacher in whatever town or village in the world, you will hear at some point,   imagine a long thread,  stretching from the crown of your head, to the sky.     it’s almost always something I say at the beginning of each class (after all the other postural instructions, starting from the feet).      it’s quite an image,  though,  your crown attached umbilically to the heavens,  and we may struggle a bit trying to visualize it, let alone to enact, and then to stay like this throughout the one hour class!   Don’t feel discouraged.    I tell my class that it’s probably the hardest part of the pose and the form — keeping your eyes focused ahead, your head relaxed on the stem of your neck.    A teaching:    Hawkes, my erstwhile teacher, would te...

When I started this blog, I promised to write about how to incorporate t'ai chi into every day life -- walking around,  in the house, on an icy sidewalk -- and I haven't kept my word.  I've been writing about all kinds of things --   your carrying-the-ball hands,  t'ai chi villages in China --   but not about the mundane and for that I apologize. And I'm going to change that here, when I talk about how to deal, in a t'ai chi way, with stuff lying around on the floor.  You may have something that is always there, that you need to walk around,  occasionally pick up,  maybe curse at it a little.  Maybe you've got a small step leading into a room. In my case, it's Violet, my catahoula leopard dog.  She was a rescue, with a sad story, and a very sensitive disposition.  How I got her.   I had had a couple of catahoulas, and knew and liked this breed, that rumor has it, was developed in Louisiana (There's a parish of Catahoula). ...

"Tai chi and meditation are the things that make it possible for me not to flip out.” Laurie Anderson It's interesting that Anderson  and her husband, the great Lou Reed, may he rest in peace,  were passionate about t'ai chi.   He was sick for many years, and turned to tai chi as a form of non-invasive medical treatment. I'm forwarding a video of Master Chen man ch'ing performing the entire Yang form, which is what you're studying.  Master Chen is accredited with bringing the Yang form of tai chi to the States, I believe in the 50s.   You'll see the light and easy way he does that first move.    It's just a formal way of moving into the start, or our tai chi stance with both feet parallel and shoulder width apart and saying ... "now we can begin"  Enjoy!     ~  Susan