Xoanan

Be Yourself/ dance!

2011-09-06T22:33:00.002-04:00

Hi All
I have been away from blogger for a bit;
Some of you on FB already know some of my story anyway, but I will update things here as well.

About 1 1/2 months ago, my Mother-in Law(or my Second Mom) passed away; as you can tell, I loved her very much. We had a beautiful relationship that I treasure even now that she has passed. Her love for me, her daughter(my wife), my children and all of her family is strong and that will never die.

She gave some of us some last instructions; to most of them, it was to take care of my father in law as he would need us to be strong for him; but for me, she wanted me to know how much she loved me. Here I am, an a aristocratic raggamuffin from East Nashville and she loves me anyway. Here other instruction was this -- Just Be Yourself

She was and is a treasure beyond words.

She could dance in the rain.

Dance, StarrMom so we too can feel the dance!

Wrapped in Love

2010-02-22T23:55:00.002-05:00

If you could take all that you thought you knew about love and put it down in a book to read, it would never compare to the real thing.

I have felt a love that has totally surrounded me

and held me close.

Often I wondered what was my place in this world

and then

I came to a place in my life that just awakened my soul

and showed me something beyond the ordinary experience

You may think me odd or different for writing something like this

Or you may think this is a love poem for a girl.

In actuality, this is merely an expression of gratitude to God in Heaven and his son

for opening my heart and letting me feel this love that was inside me

I want to thank my wife and my children; my Mom and my Mom and Dad(in laws) and my many sisters for their love as well.

You all know who you are!

New Year

2010-01-01T08:41:00.004-05:00

Happy New Year to All!

This year, I hope to become much more active with my friends at FOH; I will be spending some time with my teacher in Nashville, learning some techniques that are specifically designed for children with special needs such as autism.

I have taught Gracie and Josh a few moves, but it has not been a regular practice; I hope to make it regular in the new year.

In other news, I am doing a new project I call,

THE PSALMS PROJECT

Basically, what I am doing is I am reading the book of Psalms over and over again every day; this practice will become like Tai Chi practice which is also done over and over again. The goal is to cleanse the mind from all the negative "habitual" thoughts that come into my mind every day.

Pray for me, my family, Faces of Hope and everyone affected by autism

2009-11-15T17:38:00.000-05:00

11/15/09; Testing out "Driver", a journal editor I downloaded from the repos on Ubuntu.
So far, Leslie is doing well all things considered; FOH is good too, but we still could use more assistance.
We are trying a few old techniques we learned from RIP to see if they help alleviate the number and frequency of tantrums our son has. Pray for success, please!

Thanx all

Josh and risperdal

2009-03-26T07:22:00.002-04:00

Hi all

We finally talked to a doctor who has experience with autism/aspergers last week. He was very knowledgable and he was good with Josh.

After some waiting, we finally have him on a med called risperdal which is a mood stabilizer. I thought that was wise considering that a lot of his actions were similar to bipolar symptoms(this also runs in my family).

A few hours after he took his first dose last night, he and actually had a small conversation which is remarkable all things considered.

It is morning now; he is still a little tired, but he does not appear "cranky" as he sometimes has been in recent mornings. I am hoping and praying that today, he has a good day at school.

2009-02-14T10:29:00.000-05:00

Testing, testing. 1,2,3....

Hell All

Sorry I haven't posted here in while.

I am, at this very moment testing out Blog Entry Poster, from Ubuntu. If it works with Vox and Blogspot, then, in theory, I should be able to post to both places with one application.

I will let you know how it turns out!

Fightinggale is at a cleaning party at Faces of Hope; I don't know if Leslie Face herself is there; her last entry on Facebook indicates that she had a stomach virus about 12 hrs ago.

School is going well for the kids

I am delving into The Ubuntu Linux Toolbox and learning more and more.

Faces of Hope/West London

2009-02-01T16:48:00.000-05:00

Hi All

Here's a little story I got from the parent meeting at the Faces of Hope facility here in our town of Gallatin. The board's former chairman, Glen was discussing his attempts to raise funds for the program. He talked to one, well-to-do individual and this same individual turned him down flat.

Sometime later, Glen went to WalMart for some supplies and met the lady who served him at McDonald's. She asked him to follow her to a place in the back and gave him $200.00 worth of supplies.

There is something about this story that is both sad and inspiring. We are attempting to do something that a lot of people think are impossible and we are doing it with a lot of help from several people who are simply willing to give their time, energy and some funds, even those who have very little.

This puts me in mind of a a poem that sums this up.

Matthew Arnold - West London
Crouch'd on the pavement close by Belgrave Square A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied; A babe was in her arms, and at her side A girl; their clothes were rags, their feet were bare. Some labouring men, whose work lay somewhere there, Pass'd opposite; she touch'd her girl, who hied Across, and begg'd and came back satisfied. The rich she had let pass with frozen stare. Thought I: Above her state this spirit towers; She will not ask of aliens, but of friends, Of sharers in a common human fate. She turns from that cold succour, which attneds The unknown little from the unknowing great, And points us to a better time than ours.

Matthew Arnold - West London

Crouch'd on the pavement close by Belgrave Square
A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied;
A babe was in her arms, and at her side
A girl; their clothes were rags, their feet were bare.
Some labouring men, whose work lay somewhere there,
Pass'd opposite; she touch'd her girl, who hied
Across, and begg'd and came back satisfied.
The rich she had let pass with frozen stare.
Thought I: Above her state this spirit towers;
She will not ask of aliens, but of friends,
Of sharers in a common human fate.
She turns from that cold succour, which attneds
The unknown little from the unknowing great,
And points us to a better time than ours.

Reconnecting

2009-01-14T03:58:00.003-05:00

This month, I have found myself, reconnecting with some old friends from several periods in my life including High School, Church and Family. So far, I have found 55 friends using Facebook and 4 family members.

For some reason, I feel that it's important to connect with other people again.

We all need to communicate; we all have a human need to feel connected to each other.

Perhaps people like us, who are different, feel it more and can identify it more readily.

Having a child with autism can be a challenge for us as parents. The needs are different and the behaviour causes stares in public places. It is also a great fear generator too. The fear that people will say "They can't control their kids" "They need to have the DCS called on them" etc.

All of that can easily generate that fear and that loneliness(I think I mentioned that in the last post).

Perhaps, now that I have given voice to some of these, others will give voice to the fears thereby creating that connection.

They say misery loves company; in this cause, I believe its a step towards healing.

2009-01-02T22:09:00.003-05:00

Loneliness;

This seems to be a recurring theme within this world and even in our family. Here is my issue for this evening.

For much of my growing years, I always had a church home; when I felt I need to move on, I did so and chose another church home and I grew some more. Then I got married and together, we chose another church home. Then, after 7 years another, 4 years after, still another. Then we thought we had found a good one, until someone we respect was ostracized because her children were autistic. Of course, I could relate, but I couldn't put it into words per se.

Even though I grew up in a church, I was still different and somewhat isoloated. I always perceived myself as different because of my passion for classical music, for foreign languages and of course, my rather odd behaviour. As a result, I could not truly relate to the children in the church at that time.

To be fair, I believe that some tried to relate to me, but it was a challenge. There were some situations in my life that were quite hard for other to swallow even though they were true.

When I left that home church, I left merely because I could no longer grow there and so I went to another church; this church had the passion that I seemed to crave. It had the music that filled me up my soul. However, even that was not enough, for now that I was married, I had a wife who had no friend in the church.

We ran into the same thing at other churches; It was as if, the churches only saw me and not her. This made her feel isolated.

When we had our second child and found out that he had Autism Spectrum Disorder, the people at another church were somewhat helpful, but, it was a mistake to try to fit him into a box of their own creation. So we left.

At this new church, we found a class just for him with other children with special needs. Everything seemed fine, until we learned that someone else with autistic was asked to leave. So this lady was isolated.

We are outcasts, it appears. You can say that we need to find a way to fit in, but the society, doesn't always understand who we are.

Is there hope? Yes there is. Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ spent most of his time, with... outcasts. Is he there for us as well? yes. Do we need him? yes, most definitely.

Amen,
Come Lord Jesus.

2008-12-29T10:25:00.003-05:00

Hi All

I haven't been on Blogger in awhile; I have been posting on Vox for the most part. The url is www.patrickxfce.vox.com.

I came back to Blogger because Leslie Face has her blog here as well. Please check Momworkingapuzzle for more info.

I hope to post more later on. We are in a period of transition, I think for several reasons. My son was diagnosed with Autism in November of last year, which explains a lot of the challenges we are facing.

I will also post more about that later as well.

2007-06-04T09:24:00.000-04:00

Greetings All

My family and I celebrated World Taichi day on the last Saturday in April in our home town.

Teaching Taijiquan to young children can be a challenge, but it is good experience. I will be using some of the RIP techniques in my curriculum as well.

My belief is that teaching Tai Chi to them at such a young age will give them an "edge", if you will as they grow. Progress is slow, of course, but then, it is supposed to be.

The location is actually the grounds of a historic site in our town called Trousdale Place. The location was ideal for us that day for several reasons. 1. We go to the Church that is right next door; 2. The location was right on the Square, which would enable us to go straight from there to SquareFest which was also occuring that day.

As it happens, about 30 minutes later, the Ernie Reye´s Martial Arts school did a demonstration about a block from where we were. My son and I watched that for awhile as well.

We all had a good time that day in everything that we did.

There will be more pix posted on the WorldTaichi Day site from Gallatin, so for todayś blog I am just sending one.

In other news, I talked with a neighbor of mine who might be interested in working out with me. He took Tae Kwon Do some years back. We might trade forms at some point.

2007-03-11T23:38:00.000-04:00

Ren Fair Pic; thats another martial artist I met while I was there. We talked a good while. My mom joined us

More on the Journey

Once again, I will post some more tidbits from training;

Before I do that, I will give all an update; it appears that my son does not have ADHD after all; which is good, he just has trouble with communication and responding to instruction.
So in order to deal with these issues, my wife and I are taking the family to a wonderful program known as RIP which aids the communication between parents and their young children. If anyone out there has issues with young children, I highly recommend the RIP program. Learn more here .

As it happens, when I first began my training, I had a lot of trouble responding to instruction as well. My teacher told me once that it took him about 3 months of training just to get me to listen to him. Small wonder that my son would have similar issues.

During that time, my problem was always wanting to go farther more quickly; the practice of Taijiquan teaches us to slow down. I never truly understood that until recently. It is a wonder that I did not give up on the practice altogether; yet something kept me going to Tai chi Class; I have no idea what it was; perhaps it was a belief that it was important or a belief that if I practiced it enough, I could make it work for me.

In some later years, my teacher decided that he would teach me out of his house instead of at the park, due to the crowds. Most of the time, we would practice in the backyard of his apartment which was a house in Historic Edgefield. Most of the time, class time remained uninterrupted there.

One day, I remember practicing the static 8 gates form in the front yard, when a car stopped on the street and some teenagers from the neighborhood immediately got out and started towards us, giving us that friendly greeting that really means "lets rumble!".

I continued to practice, as did my teacher, but I was afraid. I asked him, "do you know them?" while I was performing the pull down. He responded very calmly "no." At that point the kids from the neighborhood got back in the car and sped off.

I try to remind myself of that lesson every chance I get. The incident reminds me that being different will "invite" ridicule from others more often than not; the trick is learning how to handle that ridicule and indeed almost any conflict differently.

In this example, I continued my form because my teacher kept doing the form. Would I have done the same thing, if I were alone? Of this, I do not know.

Oddly enough, this also relates to something we learned in the RIP program. For example, if we respond to inappropriate behaviour by attention to it, then we are inadvertently rewarding it. I f we do not respond at all, then there is no reward for the child.

In the incident in question, my teacher did not respond to the taunts of the neighborhood teens at and so, seeing that they were not going to get anything from us, they left. Sometimes that does work.

Now, more than ever, with a world that is tottering on the very brink of chaos and collapse, we still need to remain still and listen to that "still small voice of calm" (taken from a familiar hymn "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind")

2006-10-09T10:39:00.000-04:00

Hi All

Now back to the story of my Taijiquan training.

In the beginnging, my teacher trained us at Centennial Park in Nashville Tennessee. Our class tended to vary in size; we had students from other disciplines coming to learn more about Taijiquan.

My Teacher started us off with a basic form he called "The static 8 gates" He called it static because there wasn't as much footwork in it as the "Ba Men" or 8 gates and 5 steps described in the book.

The main purpose of the static gates is to get the student and the body used to the basic motions found in most of the Yang forms. Circular motion was and is an integral part of Taijiquan as most will know.

In my first time there, I managed to memorize the first 4 motions of the static gates which are
1. Peng or Ward Off
2. Roll back
3. Press
4. Push.

I vaguely remember my legs aching when I was doing the form that day; I thought it was odd that my legs were aching so much when the motion didn't have that much leg work and the stancing was not that low.

In addition to that, I found breathing difficult(I am still an asthma patient) during the form, which I thought was also odd as it was such a slow form.

Eventually, I made progress in both areas, but that took time.

A few years ago, I went to visit my teacher, Tom, who is still teaching now at the YMCA in Antioch, Tennessee. He introduced me to the class and said to them, that when he first started teaching me, he could hear me breathing from a good distance and could tell that I was having trouble.

It felt both good and a little weird being praised by my teacher, but I realized how important it was to show the other students what sort of progress can be made if there is some effort put forth in it.

As for the feeling weird bit, I suppose that is a latent fear of success that I apparently still harbor. For the person who succeeds, more is expected; Don't be too surprised by the occasional failure, it is bound to happen, but then again, so is success. So its important to make sure that the fear that comes with succeeding does paralyze the person

2006-09-23T12:46:00.000-04:00

Taijiquan and ADHD

Hello again;

I will continue my story in another post. At this moment, I am going to give a brief pause in the narrative to relay something. I found this article on the web

Generation of Geniuses?

How Could this Change the World for ALL of Us?

A few years ago I caught part of a major network news program on genius children and their's and their parent's experiences with public schools pressuring them to place these children on Ritalin. Some of the parents being interviewed had found alternative ways to deal with their children’s issues, that didn’t involve years of drug use, such as Ritalin.

In this same program, a person from a national organization of American geniuses expressed concern that if Edison or Einstein were in public school today, that they may likely be diagnosed with ADHD, and drugged into “normalcy” so that they could “fit in.”

In 1999, the Center for Pediatric Research, at a children’s hospital in Virginia found that 8 to 10% of students were receiving drug therapy for Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder, commonly known as ADHD. Trends show that these numbers are likely to be increasing dramatically.

In a 2005 interview with the New York Times, James T. Webb, a clinical psychologist and author of Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children and Adults, explained, “Behaviors of many gifted children can resemble those of, say, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Most teachers, pediatricians and psychologists aren't trained to distinguish between the two. Most gifted kids are very intense, pursuing interests excessively. This often leads to power struggles, perfectionism, impatience, fierce emotions and trouble with peers. Many gifted kids have varied interests, skipping from one to the other - a trait often misinterpreted as A.D.H.D.”

In the network news program mentioned at the beginning of this article, one of the children’s mothers explained that her child had been obsessed with the state of the global environment, and agitated by that. This was deemed to be “abnormal” by the school, and was part of the reason for the decision to place her on Ritalin.

It is entirely possible that a child who is a genius was aware of the long known dangers of global warming, and the unrelenting trends of continuing rises in CO2 emissions worldwide. After having seen the recent documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” we would have to admit that such a child was “ahead of her time,” by becoming concerned and appropriately agitated by this issue, before the general public became concerned. It is very possible that these "agitated" children could become the "rabble rousering" adults who found and organize human rights, environmental, and other visionary movements that improve the lives of all of us.

This is what geniuses do. They see danger and possibility ahead of the pack. Without their ability humanity may well still be swinging rudimentary clubs, and living in caves. Advances weren’t instantaneously seen by all members of a tribe or society, but certain members of the group had insights that quickly became adopted by the others. Without those who possess the ability to be dissatisfied with the status quo, and driven to distraction from the normal everyday tasks, to vision in a greater awareness . . . human advance does not occur.

Today, our planet is sagging from the weight of 6 billion human inhabitants, and in our lifetimes this may reach 9 billion. The demands for food, energy, water, and other resources will take on a screaming shrillness that may drive our world mad . . . “UNLESS” we find new creative ways of living in a finite world (in terms of physical resources) by tapping into the limitless mines and oceans of human consciousness and creativity.

So, it becomes obvious that we are not only in dire need of the new generation of geniuses entering our public schools. But, in fact, we all need to become more creative in the future. When examined, the possibility of creating educational opportunities where gifted children, or geniuses, can flourish and offer positive influence to other students with their unusual and unique concepts of reality seem simple. Creating smaller class sizes, give students opportunity to expend energy expressing and interacting with teachers and other students. The College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, suggests that smaller class sizes, while beneficial for all students, are particularly beneficial for students with ADD/ADHD.

Physical education is also an outlet of energy that can help all students, as well as those with ADHD. Yet, according to the National Children and Youth Fitness Study (NCYFS) II, overall only 36% of children/youth participate in physical education class on a daily basis, and less than 30% of class time is spent in actual physical activity.

So, the first requirement to end a dysfunctional educational process that may be causing untold numbers of our new geniuses to be often unnecessarily “normalized” with institutionalized, and often mis-diagnosed drug addiction, is for our nation to dedicate itself to funding education in a way to reduce class sizes and to increase physical education and activity in all our students.

But, there may be another even greater opportunity that can be found in implementing the aforementioned education format solutions. A recent study from the University of Miami School of Medicine, on teenagers with ADHD, found that an ancient Traditional Chinese Medical exercise therapy can profoundly improve the lives of teenagers with ADHD.

Researchers reported the positive effects of Tai Chi on the adolescents with ADHD parallel the positive effects for adults including reduced mental and emotional stress (Jin, 1992) and improved mood (Jin, 1989). Although stress hormone levels were not assayed in this study, the adolescents were perceived by their teachers as being less anxious, emotional and hyperactive following Tai Chi. The adult literature has reported reduced stress hormones (cortisol) with Tai Chi (Jin, 1992).

Tai Chi research on adults has identified changes in cardiovascular, respiratory, electroencephalographic, and biochemical levels (e.g., lower cortisol stress hormone levels) (Brown, Mucci, Hetzler, & Knowlton, 1989; Jin, 1989). Reduced sympathetic activity, or enhanced parasympathetic activity, has been considered a potential underlying mechanism (Hsu, Wang & Kappagoda, 1985). This mechanism might also account for the marked behavioral changes observed in the adolescents in this study, their research report concluded.

If these profound benefits are realized, why only have students with ADHD practicing Tai Chi daily at school? Why not, include all students, teachers and administrators of all public schools? To have calmer, clearer thinking teachers and administrators, as well as students would have a spider webbing benefit that could improve the educational experience on many levels, for all students, and not just those with ADHD. Creative solutions to complex problems are inhibited by stress in any workplace, including in our increasingly complex schools. Our students, their families, and in time, our nation is benefited by calm clear thinking educators, or conversely diminished by stressed out less creative educators.

A recent study by David Beversdorf, an assistant professor in Ohio State's department of neurology, and Jessa Alexander, a research assistant in the department, revealed a correlation between medical students' stress levels and their performance on various types of tests. According to Jennifer Graham, a postdoctoral fellow at OSU's Institute of Behavioral Medicine Research,"When individuals are faced with a challenging task, they are less likely to perform well in complex situations." The complexity of educating children effectively to deal with an increasingly complex world is the epitome of complex challenge.

Tai Chi is an elegant exercise or therapy that offers multi-dimensional benefits including, according to emerging medical research, lowering of high blood pressure; reducing incidence of anxiety, depression, and overall mood disturbance; dramatic boosting of resistance to viral infection thru increasing certain T-Cell counts; improving respiration; balance; strength; providing cardiovascular benefit; burning calories; and teaching the body how to move in ways that promote bone and muscle development while reducing strain on the body. In fact, Tai Chi has been found to be gentle enough to be safely practiced even by people with arthritis.

In a school’s busy curriculum, to bring together all the various therapies and exercises to students to provide all these physical and emotional benefits, may take up half their day. However, an hour of practicing Tai Chi in a physical education class every day at school could not only provide the above benefits to students that could last a lifetime, but also may provide many more than can be listed in an article. The international health education effort, known as World Tai Chi & Qigong Day, provides a comprehensive “searchable by malady” listing of medical research on Tai Chi and Qigong (Pronounced, chee gong, sets of Traditional Chinese Medical exercise therapies, of which Tai Chi is one of several thousand), at its website, www.worldtaichiday.org. There is a growing awareness with emerging research that there is no other known exercise that provides the multi-dimensional benefits of Tai Chi all in one simple and absolutely safe exercise.

With a twelve year education, there is no reason why students do not graduate from high school as Tai Chi masters. If they did, what could that mean to society? Heart disease, a leading cause of death in America, with massive financial costs could be dramatically reduced according to emerging research if our children were massively trained in the preventive therapy known as Tai Chi. The rapidly growing demand for anti-depressants could be profoundly reduced by adults who’d spent 12 years of public education becoming Tai Chi masters, thru one hour per day of training in Phys Ed class. Today the 6th leading cause of death in senior citizens is due to complications often from simple falling injuries due to diminished balance. Costing Americans over $10 billion annually. An Emory University study finding that Tai Chi could cut the risk of those falls in half, portends massive monetary savings by all Americans in future years, IF students are educated now in Tai Chi.

The potential savings in an economy that spends over $1 trillion annually on healthcare, and will only increase as population increases, is staggering to contemplate. These savings dwarf the relatively minimal amounts it would require to fund our education systems to reduce class sizes, provide physical education daily to all students, and teach all students Tai Chi for 12 years. The minimal costs of Tai Chi are noted in a recent report in the June 5, 2006 International Herald Tribune, “[Tai Chi] is an art that needs no special place, fancy equipment or expensive outlay, and its regular practice can build up grace, beauty and strength in a remarkable way, whatever age one may be.”

This ancient elegant, simple, and inexpensive solution to a myriad of challenges facing our education system and society at large, perhaps could be a model for other challenges facing society, locally, nationally, and internationally. As the earlier referenced researcher mentioned, we handle complex challenges better when less stressed. If the ancient mind/body technologies developed over hundreds of years by Traditional Chinese Medical researchers, that have now spread to virtually every nation on the globe, were implimented in the way emerging medical research indicates they should be by government, business and healthcare worldwide . . . we could literally see a new world within a generation. A calmer, clearer, and healthier world.

Tai Chi Chih (a unique health regimine evolved from Tai Chi) has been used in major prison systems like Folsom Maximum Security Prison in California. Initial reports (from imate organizers of the program) indicate that “incident rates” have gone down in Folsom since the program was implimented. Research also shows that such ancient Chinese health therapies can help in drug rehabilitation programs. When the cost of law enforcement, court costs, rehabilitation, and prison costs are added up, any opportunity to train young people in public education with life tools that may help them avoid even the need for such costly institutions, must be fully explored.

The future is ripe and inviting, if we can breathe, relax, and open to our creative potential enabling us to embrace the hope dangling in front of us like a ripe apple. And by cultivating and celebrating the emerging generation of potential geniuses in our schools, rather than drugging them into “normalcy,” may open the gates of hope far beyond what we can even envision at this time.

The world we see is the one created with our thoughts.

Marcus Aurelius

(Philosopher Emperor of Rome, champion of the poor, defender of Christians, and responsible for ending the barbaric gladiator games of Rome)

AUTHOR BIO:

Bill Douglas is the author of the ebook, How to be a Successful Tai Chi Teacher (Namasta University Publishing). He is also the Founder of World Tai Chi & Qigong Day, and is a best selling Tai Chi author, whose internationally popular book, The Complete Idiot's Guide to T'ai Chi & Qigong (Penguin Putnam) is now in 3rd edition. Bill is the presenter in the DVD, Anthology of T'ai Chi & Qigong: The Prescription for the Future, and has been a Tai Chi source for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Weekend, Parade Magazine, Reader's Digest, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, Russia's Omsk Weekly News, and over 100 media worldwide. You can contact Bill, find his ebook on teaching, or learn more about World Tai Chi & Qigong Day at: www.worldtaichiday.org

SOURCES:

The Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics:

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/101/3/S1/549

American Journal of Public Health

http://bvs.insp.mx/articulos/5/1/042001.htm

ADHD News [article from the New York Times]

http://www.adhdnews.com/testforum/test9105.htm

WTCQD/ADHD Study

This article came from the WTCCQday website that I frequent from time to time. My son may have ADHD so I may be testing those out as well. As always, I will report any progress here.

2006-09-12T03:09:00.000-04:00

Hi All

I know I haven't posted in awhile and I apologize. Let me continue where I left off.

As my last post said, it would be many years after my grandmother had bought that book from China that I would actually find a teacher. I found him at the Tennessee Rennaisance Fair in Triune, Tennessee in the year 1993. They had picked out a spot to practice in between the various shopping spots there. After observing the form and talking to him, I learned that he taught Taijiquan in Nashville(which was my hometown at that time) on Sunday afternoons at Centennial Park.

About a year later, I came to demonstrate with him at Ren Fair. I am the one in the hat. My teacher is in the "Green Man" costume that he designed.

One of the first things he taught me and the other students is the history of Taijiquan. My mother had always taught me the importance of learning and understanding history, and I enjoyed history so I listened with great interest.

Around 1643 in China, the Manchurians from the North invaded the rest of China and took over the country thus creating the Ching Dynasty. One of the first things they did was to burn down all the Shaolin temples, destroy the manuals and of course, forbid the practice of Kung Fu. So, in order to keep the martial arts alive, the changed things, they made Taijiquan, and made the movements slow and even so that if the Ching agents looked, it would appear as if it were yoga.

Now, of course, he also taught about the Chen family, the Yang and the Wu families as well. Most of those stories are fairly well documented on the web and in books. As far as books go, the class curriculum was basically this book.

I would read this book almost every day and practice at home everyday the basic combination forms. for well over a year. Every Sunday afternoon, I would return to Centennial park for another lesson, under the backdrop of the Parthenon.
Every once in awhile, I return to Centennial and I will practice there. It reminds me of the beginnings and roots.

About a year and a half later, I finally learned the form that was depicted in the book I mentioned in the first posting from my teacher. At that point I earned a dragon, which we sort of adopted as our class symbol(mainly because our teacher was wearing it)

In some of the photos, I was demonstration the aforementioned form, the Beijing 24 movement form, which is based on the Yang short form.

Tai Chi Experience in a small town

2006-03-24T19:22:00.000-05:00

Hello to All

In this my first posting I will attempt to relay my attempts at starting a Tai Chi class in my town as well as organising the event known as World Tai Chi and Chi Gong Day

I have been playing Tai Chi for about 13 years now, yet I have never taught. Unfortunately, I still have a little shyness and fear to overcome.

As a child, I saw much violence in my own home. I would wake up during the night and see it happening and I knew that there was nothing I could do to stop it. Sometimes it would happen to me as well. During this time, I felt completely powerless.

I was a chronic asthmatic and almost every excercise I did or every game I played, virtually every movement I made, triggered an attack. I spent most of my time fighting for every breath. As a result of this, I was shunned by most of the other kids as well as being teased.

Because of these difficulties, I had a strong desire to be stronger, healthier and more in control of my body and so I was drawn to the martial arts. I was fascinated by the thought that a series of movements could be used to protect myself and others.

I wanted to be strong and in control of myself, so My grandmother, who was a music teacher at a local college was going to take a trip to China, so I asked her if she could bring me back a book about Karate. When she came back, she brought me a small book called Simplified Taijiquan: Chinese Sports Series 1. The book she found was smaller than the one pictured and the man is younger here.

I thought that the book was magic at that age. A book about a series of circular movements so fluid and musical, I knew that it was for me.

It would many years, before I would find a teacher who could take me to that level.