Late Wu Style

  Every few years I check on Youtube to see who is currently offering videos related to T’ai Chi.  

As I age, T’ai Chi offerings seem to evolve as well. I’m happy to report that the direct Wu Style lineage is doing well and is still in Toronto. 

I am fourth generation. My teachers, Mr. And Mrs. Chow, studied for 17 years with Dr. Young, who spent many years studying with Wu Chien Chuan.

I feel very lucky to have studied with with the Chows for many years, since 1976, and and to have received teacher training as well, until they retired around the beginning of this century. 

Their style, Late Wu, is very traditional and is very much in line with the Wu Family Lineage. 

The weight is shifted 100%. (Mrs Chow would point out when students were ‘Double weighted”, or “Floating”, when their form lacked this.) 

The angles, both within the body (elbows, knees, etc.) and in body or foot orientation (facing direction), were precise. Because of this, Mr. Chow would point out that his form would end in the exact location that he began. 

He said that in the Walk, the back foot in Late Wu would be facing forward, parallel to th front foot, while in early Wu, the back toes would be pointed out 45 degrees.

In our style, the hands were very rarely raised above the head, and the wrists rose to shoulder height when the arms came up. When the elbows bent they dropped down rather than out, and held at 90 degrees. 

When the knees bent they did not extend past the toes. 

Also, Mr. Chow never blinked while doing the form.

Mrs. Chow would sometimes practice the form slowly, and sometimes very fast, always with perfect precision.  

Mr. Chow taught the “Square”, or “Step by step” form, with each movement having it’s own count. (I believe this count for each part was Mr. Chow’s contribution). 

He would teach the entire Square form before teaching the students the “Continual”, or “Round” Form. 

His Continual form might be described as circles within circles, his hands sometimes “Holding a ball” as they moved and encircled the energy, always with perfect economy of movement and always originating from his center.

Mrs. Chow’s form was more martial, and similar to that of their teacher, Dr. Young.

 Football players would come to learn from her. 

She was small and short, and they would be astonished when she easily pushed them over again and again, when practicing “Tu Sho”, (“Push hands”).

Mr. Chow was a Healer, and seemed to be working with the Energy.  Mrs. Chow was very strict, and they wonderfully complemented each other’s styles, that weren’t at all different. 

Rather, it was as though each had their own handwriting style; the same rules, but each had their own unique manifestation, both writing in the same language. 

They were not only my Mentors, they were my friends.

Chinese Watercolor Painting

The Chows taught Painting and T’ai Chi. At some point, their painting students asked them to teach them T’ai Chi. 

They never advertised, but would sometimes give demonstrations. 

I was always amazed when Mr. Chow would dip his brush into 3 different paints, and with one brushstroke create a bird’s tail with all the colors in exactly the right place!

Best to All,

Daniel

Speculative Thoughts

Time, Space, Gravity & Focus

We sometimes move through space at a rate of our choosing. Time can be more complicated. Physically we seem to move only forward at a set rate of speed, and change is measured thus. 

Our conscious awareness of time’s passing is sometimes more fluid. 

We move only forward from moment to moment. 

When we focus our attention on the details of observable change things can get more complicated. 

We might watch each second tick by when we wait for water to boil, but if we go out in the rain it takes but a very short time for us to get wet. 

We seem to always move forward through time, but the rate may change as our focus changes!

Gravity might also be seen differently depending upon one’s focus. 

If we are not in balance, things can happen very quickly, but the “Gravity of a situation” might change dependent upon the rate of flow of the information, which is not so fixed.

Quantum Mechanics

When we attend to the physical or to the conscious frames of reference, one might object that it’s “Apples and oranges”, and they are totally different. 

But if we study these in more and more detail, we eventually enter the quantum realm, and the predictions made based upon the study of quantum mechanics have, time and time again, been validated by experimental data. 

In other words, our attention does matter! 

Artificial Intelligence

What if… What if we begin to use tools to focus our attention? Is it still Our attention?

T’ai Chi, being a physical activity, brings us back down to Earth, and practical experience. 

When we lose our balance, the effects of this validate our physical reality. 

Through time, the effects of our actions come home to roost. 

Just so, the effects of our choice of focus must play a part in deciding what reality we may create.

The Political Pendulum

Short sighted political expediencies, just so, will also eventually come home to roost, and sooner or later create a more optimistic outcome than one might expect.

Be of good cheer. 

Sometimes the pendulum must swing into the negative in order to gather the needed energy to initiate a positive part of the cycle. 

Have faith that no effort is wasted as surely as E = MC squared!

The Future 

(Food for Thought)

Perhaps breakthroughs in our understanding of both time and gravity are nearing a quantum leap, reminiscent  of the slingshot orbital mechanics utilized in recent interplanetary explorations such as the Voyager probes, and just as scientific!

Very Best Wishes Always,

Daniel 

The Secret of Life

 There comes a time in one’s life that one has the opportunity to decide to be a good guy, one who does the right thing.

This might just be the secret of life.

It doesn’t matter how much or little one has, just this knowledge can and will make the difference between a life of happiness or sorrow. 

Anyone can do this. Every single person that decides this joins a team dedicated to making the world a better place. 

This not only brings peace of mind, but also provides the immense benefit of not ever being alone again. 

All that’s required is the dedication. Perfection is not required.

 

This simple realization brings a blessing bestowed upon all who understand this.

This is what Jesus meant when he spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth. 

It’s the Bodhisattva Vow to continue to work for the Enlightenment of all beings after the achievement of one’s personal Enlightenment.

In Judaism it is said that ‘A Good Life is it’s own Reward.’.

It’s not rocket science. It is a Blessing available to all.

Around the circumference of the Wheel of Life, the Teachings might appear different.

 If we follow the spokes of the wheel to the center, it’s the oneness of us all, manifested by our actions, that espouses the Heart of each Religion. 

Namaste.

Coconut Grove in the 1960's

 When I was a college student in the 1960s, I fell in with a Bohemian crowd. I had a four year Scholarship to the University of Miami, and began my freshman year in the fall of 1965 as a commuter living with my family in North Miami Beach, about 20 miles North of the school. 

The next year I moved to Coral Gables and shared an apartment with a friend near the school. During that year I wound up with a room-mate that knew much of the Coconut Grove community, and I connected with something special that was happening then and there.

The following year I moved into a low rent apartment in  Coconut Grove, parked my car in the yard, and rode my bicycle to school at the UM and to work at Burdines department store in the Dadeland Mall, before it was enclosed and air conditioned. I had the downstairs apartment behind the Easy-Quick at 27th Avenue and Bird Rd. It had broken windows, a wall AC, and the rent was $35. a month. On the other side was a laundromat.

You could buy two bags of groceries for about three dollars, a new Volkswagen bug was $1,200., and an MGB sports car cost $2,600. The tuition at UM was $600. a semester, and my scholarship paid $500. of that.

In the upstairs Apartment lived Pete and Ann, old Grove Bohemians, where the musician Fred Neil often hung out when he sometimes retreated from the world. (Later the upstairs apartment was rented by some friends who were part of putting together the Doors concert at Dinner Key Auditorium March first, 1969, along with Timothy Leary, but that’s another story.) 

I was the quiet, sometimes stoned kid who occupied a corner and didn’t talk a lot.  I was younger than most. Freddie befriended me and sometimes we’d chat. 

I didn’t know a lot. I was a sponge, that absorbed much from the bohemian folk music and intellectual environment. 

Dinner Key and the ‘Safe harbor’ anchorage designation off the marina, on the other side of Sand Island, on the nautical charts that allowed free anchorage to all sailors, also added to the community of free spirits and added something special to the mix.

 People that lived in the anchorage would sometimes gather around a campfire on Sand Island, and I sometimes found myself a part of some memorable times there.

My dedication to my schooling and college education saved me from falling into the self-destructive drug behaviors to which I was sometimes exposed. (My Scholarship required me to maintain a minimum ‘B’ grade average, and, as I was an Honor student, my classes were sometimes somewhat challenging). 

Coconut Grove, in those days harbored a community that was an outpost, or extension of the culture found in Greenwich Village in New York City. It was a part of the Folk and intellectual community found there, perhaps reminiscent of Paris in the 30’s…, and I was lucky enough to find myself there. 

In those years, when many went to school to get a career, I was trying to find myself, and looking for meaning in life.  The people in that environment, mostly older than me, seemed to exhibit a sureness that promised the understanding that I sought.

 There were people there who knew Ken Kesey, Lenny Bruce, Allen Ginsberg, Alan Watts, amongst others. I would sometimes hear stories and anecdotes of their lives and antics, that couldn’t be read in any book.

I sought to become a Renaissance man, and took lab courses in chemistry and biology rather than the survey courses taken by most liberal arts majors. Besides a major in Psychology and Philosophy, I completed the requirements for a minor in English. 

Inspiration

T’ai Chi is so much more than the physical movements, which are just one way to look at something much larger and all encompassing! 

The principles of T’ai Chi, the connectedness and cooperation/integration of all the parts of not only the body, but of any closed or open system, (including feelings and insights as well as thoughts), can foster an extremely useful and practical path toward generating a more encompassing world view or consciousness.

This opens the door to including such topics as these above musings in this blog.

 They have helped me to grow and integrate a world view that might encompass much within a framework based upon the principles of T’ai Chi. For this I feel Blessed.

Blessings to All,

Daniel

Focus/Teaching Skills

 Paying attention involves both deciding what to focus on, and the actual set of skills used in focusing. 

Before I can focus my eyes or my mind on anything, I must pick that which I will attend to. It is only after this happens that actual focusing, or selection, may take place. 

For example, my general take on teaching has been to be task oriented. 

With this starting point I might think of the (or a) best way to learn T’ai Chi. 

I have tended to teach the way my teachers, the Chows, taught me. This was perhaps an excellent way, for them in their time and place, and in their culture, assuming a mature population in which the student takes responsibility for their own commitment, they focused on the form. 

In a large population, this was sufficient to keep motivated students. However many students today in our culture may benefit from something more. 

As Mary Poppins would say, “A little bit of sugar helps the medicine go down.” 

Many successful teachers know this and take this into account. 

This entails focusing on the big picture, not just the teaching task but also the teaching situation.

 I had excellent teachers, but perhaps I didn’t acquire some of their more subtle techniques that aided their students through the more tedious parts of the learning process. 

For me, this might just be some of the wisdom that accrues through age. 

For others, this entails looking at what might engage the student, and other such details that might fall under the category of being not only an instructor but also serving as an entertainer, or roll modeling healthy interactions. 

After these concerns are attended to and the student is helped through any pitfalls encountered, then the focusing or selection process may be applied more appropriately to the T’ai Chi content.

As I begin Teaching T’ai Chi again perhaps I might improve my teaching skills by paying more attention to the student’s needs as a student, and include this in the curriculum design. 

“A successful musician is not only a musician, but also an entertainer.”

- Marshall Tucker

Best Wishes to All,

Daniel 

An Ounce of Laughter

 "Drive all blames into one."  

                                    - Jamgon Kongtrul

What if we stop trying to assign blame for the situations that plague our search for peace of mind? 

“Transcendence restores humor. Spirit restores humor. Suddenly, smiling returns. Too many representatives of too many movements, even very good movements, such as feminism, environmentalism, meditation, spiritual studies, seem to lack humor altogether. In other words, they lack lightness, they lack a distance from themselves, a distance from the ego and it’s grim game of forcing others to conform to it’s contours. 

There is self transcending humor, or there is the game of ego power…

 

(We) should all trade the pounds of ego for one ounce of laughter.”

                                      -Ken Wilber (The essential Ken Wilber,1998,p.185)

In Jamgon Kongtrul’s The direct path to Enlightenment, a list of useful aphorisms, “Drive all blames into one” is followed by “Be grateful to everyone.”.

It’s good to stand up for things that we believe in, but, just maybe, not so beneficial to get lost in them. 

This is because herein we risk creating more polarization and division, and defeat our goal of making things better.

Earthlings are known throughout the inner Solar System for two things; their creativity and their resourcefulness. 

When some Earthling astronauts were scheduling their next mission, they decided that since some of them had already visited their moon, and they wanted to visit someplace that had not been visited before, they would go to the Sun. 

Their engineers protested that this was impossible. It was too hot! 

They replied “Don’t worry! We’ll go at night!”

Namaste, Daniel

Again,

"Namaste" translates as: “May the Light within me honor the Light within You!”

New Year's Resolution

 Recent events in my own life have caused me to look at and ponder upon what direction I might like to take, moving forward.

Although I am blessed with many skills and many options, I am finding out that I also have a lot of baggage and a long way to go. 

As I get older I find that this is good. It suggests that perhaps I am not done yet.

 

It feels good to be needed and as long as I have something to give, there is still a place for me here. There is always more to be done.

This might require that I keep an open mind and that I take good care of myself. 

I should not forget to always try to make things better and to work for the common good.

I should not expect perfection in myself or others. I hope to always foster Good Intentions in myself and by example, in others. 

I also see the importance of Joy, Humor and Compassion in order to foster thoughts, feelings, and actions that create an all encompassing ‘Us’ instead of ‘Us versus Them’.

Sometimes even a little bit can do a lot!

We have the power to make a better future and this thought can sustain Hope!

Namaste,

(May the Light within me honor the Light within You),

Daniel