Yesterday I traveled to Toronto to put on a Tai Chi seminar organized by a previous student of mine. Her company has a health and wellness group that thought that its membership would benefit from tasting what Tai Chi had to offer.

I met the group at a downtown park and I talked a bit about how vast an art Taijiquan is as it encompasses health benefits, martial applications, scholarly pursuits, energetic facets and spiritual understandings.

The group was anxious to begin learning forms so I began showing them the first few forms in the 16 set. We made it to the second brush knee and decided to stop there. I must say, this group followed very nicely and showed genuine interest in learning the forms.

I then did a quick exercise to show them how the body follows the mind and then we did a very brief exercise to see if anyone could feel qi. To my delight almost half did sense qi, most of them were first timers!

An hour isn’t enough time to properly introduce an art as deep as Taijiquan so I feel I did not hit on many of the concepts that I would have liked to introduce to the group. This experience has sparked me to sit down and create a one hour introductory curriculum which I will invariably massage as I continue to help spread the word about our beloved art.

The highlight of my day happened well after the seminar was finished. My former student was walking me back to the subway station and we were catching up on our lives.

She explained to me that she was late to the seminar because she had been in an interview. She then went on to explain how she had used Taiji during the meeting! Apparently she had been asked certain questions that entice a response on the aggressive side. Instead, she made the conscious decision to neutralize that incoming energy and then responded in a calm and controlled manner in a way that felt right to her. She admitted that this definitely was not the response that would advance her stock in the interview but she was comfortable in the knowledge that everything happens for a reason and it was better for her to be true to herself then put on a façade. (Sweet!)

I love it when students “get it” and employ the lessons we learn in the studio during the interactions of their daily lives.

Peace

Rod