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Showing posts from August, 2020
I just discovered an extraordinary t'ai chi artist or warrior  or dancer (or all three),  Sifu (or master) Cheung Kwok Wha.   He's doing a form I haven't seen,   Needles in Cotton,  or  Pak Hok Pai. I believe its roots are in ancient Tibet.  Anyways, Sifu Cheung's  movements are so precise,  so centered,  so ... exquisite. I watched him performing the form  straight through barely breathing.   Click on the highlighted part, and enjoy!

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 be