Tai Chi

I recently did a Tai Chi & Meditation weekend retreat at a lovely house in Oxfordshire called Braziers Park. It's a perfect venue, with beautiful, peaceful, grounds, but the house deserves some tlc. The food was great. Andy, the leader, was a really good teacher. Very skilled & very patient, (he needed to be!)

There's a lot more to Tai Chi than I realised. For one thing, watching the Chinese do it in parks & streets in China makes it look deceptively easy. It's not - think very slow, complicated & purposeful Line Dancing & you might get close. It's a series of movements involving the whole body & intense concentration. Each slight change in position of any part of the body means you have to be focussed & balanced. Falling over isn't an option.

We learned one small sequence at a time & then joined them all up into a longer sequence. I got close to being in the right position at the right time, but never achieved perfect flowing movement. We only scratched the surface of all the moves. It's something you have to be committed to and be prepared to practise for years.

The really surprising thing is that something so graceful & flowing is a martial art. Its just very slowed down. Andy did it with 2 mean looking swords & a long stick at a pace which made us all wonder whether he would survive uninjured. A really good teacher makes something complicated look simple & is able to break the information down in a way that enables novices to stand a chance of learning.

This novice needs a lot more time & practice!