Natural Motion Explorations Archive
Learn how each joint functions independently and how each integrates into the whole of your body, mind, spiritual movements.
It’s a subtle gift to commentors; a soft way of offering thanks. I changed my comment-template to describe your links as contact instead of nofollow.
Mural of Carlos Gardel
What does that mean?!
It means that, if you have a website, and you fill in the website section when you comment on this article, you get web-flow. Web-robots roaming the internet will flow from this article to your website or weblog. Your traffic will undoubtedly increase.
Nofollow is a tag attached to links, behind the scenes. It blocks web-robots from travelling from one website to another. This common strategy, used by every big website and most small websites, keeps the web-bots roaming locally. Webmasters call it keeping your Google Juice. In some ways it helps build website-chi.
I updated my infrastructure to Wordpress 2.7. Improved functions, elegance, and grace infuse the new interface. I recommend it. Upgrade Wordpress if you use it and change to it if you don’t. By default, 2.7 installs the nofollow tag on commentor links. But no more at RealTaiji.com.
Advanced Tai Chi and Eye Therapy
When we begin studying Great Extremes Boxing, we fixate on learning forms and sequences, on remembering strange things and foreign ideas, and on trying to relax. It’s a giant task, coordinating internal arts, but when relaxation begins to wake awareness, both remembering and learning begin to flow, and motions grow more subtle, more profound.
Move the eyes. After we get Tai Chi form basics, one subtle motion we search for is eye-motions. Some movements in the form direct us to hook the eyes on a distant object and, as our body turns left and right, leave the eyes floating inside the head; this is the way Ward-Off works. In another movement we lead with the eyes: eyes turn to the West, then the body follows as in Single Whip. Repulse Monkey teaches the eyes a deeper kind of peripheral vision by directing the mind to both hands, while those hands are on the edges of vision.
Eyes soften. The continuous, waving motions in the eyes, from pose to pose throughout the form, draws a sensual ease and relaxation into the eyes and face, head and neck, and relaxation spreads throughout the body. For some, like me, vision improves. My vision moved from 20/80 to 20/30 over an 8 year span. What began as softening my face led to relaxing my whole spine and, one day, all of a sudden—Pah!—I could see crystal-clear.
At a fairly sophisticated level, the Tai Chi Chuan Long Form reflects treatment protocols revealed by Francine Shapiro in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR): Basic Principles, Protocols, and Procedures, 2nd Edition. EMDR is an integrative psychotherapy method “designed to maximize treatment effects.” Although some skeptics perceive EMDR as an alternative therapy, studies continue to display great successes for EMDR. Its success sparkles, particularly in treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and intense, trauma-derived mental health issues.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing’s therapeutic phases outline a clever and comprehensive strategy for healing deep wounds, and the methodologies suggest applications that we can use for developing and deepening Great Extremes Boxing, both as a martial art and healing art.
Read Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing »
Motility, Long Form, Applications, Pushing-Hands, Striking!
The system of Tai Chi Chuan begins and evolves through five methods: light, sensitive body exploration, properly executed form practice, amplified and visualized self-defense and/or healing scenarios, precise push-hands training, and coiling striking motions. Real Taiji classes include
- exploring natural joint motions
- form practice (and some Qi-gong)
- application visualizations
- push-hands training (structural, not spaghetti-style)
- striking practices
Classes and class components evolve and compound upon one another.
Read Class Contents: Taiji System »
Tai Chi Chuan promises great martial and healing powers by developing soft skills. Tai Chi teaches relaxation and grounding. As we explore relaxation, we learn to reduce excess stress and release residual tension. We notice that too much tension drains strength, upsets balance, slows our wit, and seems silly.
We own a number of methods, in the internal arts, that examine and develop soft skills.
- We practice Forms.
- We stand in Qigong Pose.
- We join in Push-Hands.
- We play Sticky-Hands.
- We do Da-Lu.
We combine these practices: by applying Qigong’s stillness to slow down our forms, or by pressing and pushing on Qigong or Tai Chi postures, we go deeper. We learn more about excessive tensions, and release them. We discover relaxed, sinking balance. We notice easy, winding motions.
