41ST ANNUAL TAI CHI FRIENDS REUNION Wednesday class 11:20-12:30 Elbows, Knees, Intention and Force

Dedicated to Damian Caspary: “Do What You Hate” Caveat for comfort and knee safety; make sure chairs are available in a Horse Shoe shape (!) Not necessary to stand through class; much can be absorbed by observation. PLEASE BE COMFORTABLE!

Objectives of the Class: Improve posture and sense of spaciousness in holding horse stance; draw attention to its strengthening capacity in executing movements by illustrating where this strength is realized in the movements; draw in nature and plant and animal associations underpinned by “the horse,” offer a review of ways to make “holding horse” easier using meditational techniques, meditation being the true force internal to our “moving meditation” practice of Tai Chi Chu’an.

Thanks to the Zoom Teachers through this year! Barbara Alderson (Crane), Brad Bennett (Horse), Jim Bush (Tiger), Catherine Holder (Owl), Yofe Johnson (Lion)

While Holding Horse Stance for 2 minutes: considerations of posture parallel feet at shoulder width apart; inner calf pressing in, thigh pressing out out, tailbone slightly tucked, chin down, slightly concave chest, lift from crown, space under the arms Elbows & knees: defining spatial structure to accord with natural world: plants, animals, landscape Intention: outer and inner intentions influenced by martial perspectives Force: meditational discipline, self knowledge, path to real force

Class Self Critique: lining up two-by-two, using elements of the considerations of posture for practitioners to correct neighbor

While Holding Horse Stance for 2 minutes: In an undated handout, Tai Chi and Togetherness, Judith Chambliss wrote: At the beginning of your practice just after universal post but before move hands like seaweed turn your palms up as if holding the forearms of your mirrored self who is also in horse-stance with you. Internally ask your ego, “Thank you for being with me in everything I do, but you deserve rest and what I am about to do does not require your participation. Please sit this time out and I will join you after.” Upon saying this, turn your palms over with the exhale and release. Continue into wave hands like seaweed.”

Realizing the Horse Stance Leg: Wave hands like seaweed: gather the seaweed, cut the seaweed, climb the mountain on the tiger’s back.

While Holding Horse Stance for 2 minutes: Gathering personal high voltage emotion and sending it into the center of the earth where the molton fires detoxify these emotions and they pass through the other side of the earth, through the depths of a beautiful lily pond as lotuses blossoming.

Realizing the Horse Stance Leg: The lotus flowers in the river’s white water (rubber band stretch); Planting the rice.

While Holding Horse Stance for 2 minutes: Beam of light meditation (based on Shamar Rimpoche’s The Path of Awakening: Picture your breath as a very narrow, bright beam of light. As you inhale and exhale you concentrate on this straight beam of light entering and exiting your nostrils. As the beam of light enters your nostrils at a 45 degree angle, imagine it flows up and through your nose, into the top of your head, curving along the inside of the skull, then descends straight down through your body to your tan tien. Let the beam of light, very narrow, very precise, then exit the same way it came, back up the spine, along the curve of the inside of the head and out the nostrils. Count each breath—that is to say, count one exhalation and inhalation as a breath— until you reach 7, 21, or however many breaths you can count while maintaining a good quality of awareness and then begin again.

Realizing the Horse Stance Leg: The Snake Creeps Down

While Holding Horse Stance for 2 minutes: From Kat Brown this winter, we learned of Mantak Chia’s Microcosmic Orbit, a meditational mode where jing is encouraged to flow upwards along the governor vessel (the Du Meridian) during inhalation and then downwards along the conception vessel (the Ren Meridian) returning to the tan tien on the exhalation. This means that energy flows from the tan tien downwards to the base of the spine then up the back along the centre line of the body to the crown of the head, then over the head and down the front centre line of the body and back to the starting point again making a full circle or orbit. [Jing energy is the deep foundational energy reserves of the body and it is this energy that determines one's ultimate vitality and the quantity and quality of one's lifespan.]

Realizing the Horse Stance Leg: High Pat on Horse; Parting the Wild Horses Mane; Stroking the Wild Horses Mane

CLOSING: Sleep like old trees, wake like young horses! quote from Kat Brown

Challenge for next year: Realize the Horse Stance leg in the execution of Continuous Punch.

Nancy M. Hoffman, PhD Westerbeke Retreat Center Sonoma, CA