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My Experience of the TCUGB London Qigong Festival

Author: David |

I recently had the great pleasure of attending a seminar on qigong organased by the Tai Chi Union and hosted by Gary Wragg in Bethnal Green, London.

As I came up the stairs I was greeted by scents that took me back to the 60's, yoga joss sticks and jasmin tea. We gathered in the lobby drinking tea and catching up on life and training until the previous class had finished and then got stuck into the first of our sessions with Simon Watson.

SImon did a really good job of slowly and methodically taking us through some exercises of prof Zhang Guangde - inventor of the Dao Yin longevity forms. All this was accompanied by the meridian theory and some visualizations. It is amazing how much more you can get out of a simple exercise when you take the take and pay it the attention it deserves! I think that's one of the things that makes it so hard to teach well.

Mike Tabrett let us sit down whilst he chatted with us about recent developments in the Forum for Health and the problems of getting government accreditation to teach people with various disabilities

A change of pace when Faye Yip taught us the Chinese Health Qigong Association's version of the very physical Muscle and Tendon Changing Classic (Yi Jin Jing). Faye is a dynamic and engaging teacher whose suppleness and dynamism made me feel every one of my 57 years in comparison.

After lunch Simon and Faye resumed their teaching and Faye had us pulling these nine cows around by their tails (one of the exercises) - no not real cows!

In what was suprisingly for me the highlight of the day, Dr Matthew Brewer explained about teaching tai chi to people suffering from chronic pain, demonstrating in the process how to concentrate on the very simplest of exercises, with the focus on the spine and posture. His powers of observation are acute and while we were practising on each other he came over and immediately (correctly) adjusted my posture in subtle ways that no other teacher had ever been able to do.

All -in-all a great day of training which I look forward to consolidating in my personal practice. If you get a chance to attend one of these events, I really recommend that you come along. I'll try and list them on Tai Chi Finder as I find out about thembut you call also check on the Tai Chi Union website

Welcome to Tai Chi Finder

Author: David |

Welcome to the all new Tai Chi Finder!

Our community site has been completely rewritten to make it more intuitive and consistent. We thank all of you for your help in making this effort a success.

Visitors - we hope you find the site easy to use. Although we do our best to keep all the information up-to-date and accurate, please confirm details such as time, place, availability before attending.
Instructors - it would be great if you could check through and update your entries. Some are looking really good now! Your existing login should still work (your username was your email address for existing members).

What is new?

Embed Video in your listings - You can embed a youtube video in your class listings or articles but please see the example for how to adapt the embed code.
Photos/Logos - There are small icons on the geographical summary pages and larger logos on the detailed entry. Either one may be your logo / a small picture of the instructor or the class.
Streamlined Geographical summary pages with just Day / time / place and two line description for each entry. This may be all that is needed, or can lead on to a detailed entry or website.
Geocoding (map co-ordinates) - The location of the class in our searches (UK / USA) is determined by the map co-ordinates entered, not by town or postcode. It is more precise.
More space and a 2nd category - an optional detailed entry and the ability to add an entry to an appropriate second category (eg. if the class is close to county boundary) means only one entry is needed for each location.
Report an Entry - A link to report incorrect listings /spam or claim any entry that you cannot access.
Edit button on each entry (visible when logged in). See the 'Edit Your Classes' menu option for finding and keeping your entries up-to-date.
Detail where needed - Countries with a lot of entries are split into regions, others are not.
Featured listings - the opportunity to highlight a listing and have it moved to the top (chargeable).
Submit articles and book review etc. on-line or tell us about video clips we should link to.

Possible Future Enhancements

Automatically expire entries (to get rid of out-of-date information)

Last Updated (Tuesday, 13 October 2009 20:50)

Grandmaster Wang Xi'an the famous teacher of Chen style tai chi, has followed in the footsteps of Chen Xiaowang and Chen Zheng Lei and just produced his first series on DVD. We have only a couple of sets available

The much heralded Feiyue High Tops are finally in stock!

Tai Chi and Tennis

Author: David |

With Wimbledon fortnight just starting David ponders how our tai chi training can help us in developing our tennis game. Although golf is often taken as an example, tennis is also interesting because as well as a 'weapon' we have the extra dimension of an opponent who directly affects our actions just as in tai chi partnerwork.......

The physical:

Body Mechanics - Things like making contact with the ball (or tai chi partner) in front of the body as the muscles are much more efficient in certain positions
Balance and stability is very important in tennis as in tai chi
Stillness - When taking the shot our head needs to be still and the centre calm
Knee bends - Important in getting below the ball to impart top spin or in reaching a low ball without stooping
Full body power - The body needs to be connected so that a chain of power is established (for example in the serve)
Control - Just as the eyes look through rather than at the opponent in tai chi to make the push more effective, so in tennis we accelerate through the ball to make the contact more effective in our ground strokes.
Agility - At any one time we have a more yin foot and a more yang foot. We don't want to be caught flat footed.