My philosophy for teaching,

practicing, living tai chi,

qigong and meditation

is all about being practical.

These are practices that yield immediate practical results that improve with repetition. Best of all, at least a little bit every day. Better five minutes of reallyy strong focus than 25 with the mind wandering all over. They are means to seeing reality clearly, without the fog of emotions obscuring our understanding. Through practice, and looking for ways to apply our discoveries in practice to the “daily grind” (time to change that label, eh?!), we learn accept life, moment by moment, without judgement, either positive or negative and to adapt as the stream of events presents various changes and challenges.

from yang tai chi shi ba shi qigong first posture

Taiji, qigong and meditation (sitting, standing or walking), are all ways of learning to be mindful, allowing us to do one thing at a time, peacefully. Most importantly, we reduce our stress this way and the stress of everyone around us.

Sensitive Dependency on Initial Conditions from Wikipeadia

Because all things, all beings are interdependent

and interconnected, the more we are mindful,

the more the whole world becomes more peaceful.

“We are each of us, a Lorenz Butterfly. And as such, we affect everything around us in ways we cannot possibly predict.” When we go through the world in anger, jealousy or other negative emotional states, we tend to see the world negatively, in fact creating conditions for anger and jealousy to arise. On the other hand, when we go through our day peacefully, trying to balance or actions and the things we say, the state of our own minds, in a balance of wisdom and compassion, observing without judgement, good or bad, love or hate… we can see things just at they are, and accept that.

So, in the interest of creating the greatest possible harmony, I use tai chi, qigong and meditation as ways to help individual students reduce their own stress by guiding them towards directly experiencing life as a flow of moments, thoughts, words and actions, (in effect choices we make). Those moments are endlessly arising, existing and ceasing, one after the next. The more we try to live very simply, blamelessly, letting go of each moment as it passes, whether pleasant or not pleasant or just in-between, the less stressful life becomes. Those ripples of peace, spread out from us, endlessly. Through our simple practice, we create conditions for more happiness for ourselves and others.

Form is emptiness ... emptiness is form - calligraphy in our school

Let me know what you think. I’m eager to hear.

Tell us about your study where ever you are,

your discoveries and practice.

Together we can help support each other in practice.