i have a teacher..i go to tai chi every monday for one hour.... yang form..long...there are 5 in group and the teacher... merle
The long for interests me, but the short form is all I have since 1979. I tried to learn a different form about 25 years ago, but all I did was confuse myself so that I could remember neither the old form nor the new form. I didn't stick with it long enough, maybe. But then I was also afraid I would forget the original form altogether if I learned a different form: it was still Yang family short form, but I think more original and traditional: I think my first master, Da Liu, actually modified some of the short form to make it a little easier. I too find t'ai chi a good practice before sitting. But my Chan shifu, Sheng Yen, taught us "morning wake-up" exercises, too, aside from meditation methods, so I usually use these. We always use them on retreat mornings when we first assemble in the Chan Hall, and after we do some prostration practice. We practice the wake-up exercises all together as a group, ritually, following a leader, and Sheng Yen would always join in when he was younger and in better health. His teaching was very compassionate and very complete, and of course he was a monk and lived this life everyday. He took very good care of us. He also knew martial arts and t'ai chi, but I never saw him practice them. His kung fu was Chan! And he taught us special Yoga exercies to use on retreat: we carried these out ritually, too, all together. Wonderful! This helped knit the sangha together, I feel, and meditation and relations among people were a lot better and easier. In walking mediation in Chan, Sheng Yen taught us to concentrate on the bottoms of the feet. We did both the Lin Chi and Tsao Tung walking: the fast and the slow. The fast walking particularly helped keep people's legs from hurting on the long retreats: everybody practiced it with a lot of enthusiasm: it kept people's spirits high during the long days. Sheng Yen always led the fast walking; it was pretty hard for us youngsters to keep up with him, even when he was in his seventies. But you become very loose and quick when you relax downwards. --Joe > Anthony Wu <wuasg@...> wrote: > > The long form will help you get rid of sleepiness in the morning before your > sitting.
