This November I had again a chance to follow master in Europe for nineteen classes, and that’s not being enough, I continued to Åland for my teacher’s six classes workshop. Feels almost like practicing has become a full time job for me.
Like said last time, I was already there, when we began in Palermo. This time Copenhagen had a nice presentation; usually there is only one person from north beside me. I actually like Copenhagen a lot, it’s close to Finland, and maybe we should have more classes there.
Arezzo was the biggest single class in Italy, but just one class is not enough to do all. This time I continued in the left front corner, and we practiced very basics of tuishou. And we had guests from the States and France.
Master also talked quite some Chinese, from which I specifically remember da tai chi, play tai chi. He’s spoken about this playfulness previously as well, and it’s a very relaxing point of view, to think the art as a game, not too serious, yet challenging and competitive. A game of awareness, reaction, posture, movement, listening, turning, releasing and gathering.
In Voiron many of the students were practicing the preparatory position before the second class, and that is one of the favorite movements of the master. Last year we even started slow set once by standing on this posture for about five minutes. It’s always good to practice before class.
Another fundamental teaching was about demonstration. I know it can be disorienting to be in front of everyone and try to concentrate on one thing, but when demonstrating it helps to just hold on posture and think first. Tai chi starts in the mind, like master said. Don’t help. Give her a chance. It may be funny to see people doing something completely different than asked, but it’s always a lesson to all the observers to be aware of the actions.
It’s a lot to take three weekends and most of the weekdays between at once, so I’ll tell the rest next week.