July 2007 Archives

You saw the video of the kid I posted a while ago doing Chen style old form, you've got to see this one too.  This is such an aspiration.  A very old man demonstrating both road one and road two in a park.  I don't know if he's a well-known master or not, but that does not matter.  He is doing a fantastic job.  I hope I can be like him when I'm that age (if I ever get to that age!)



Here's the direct link in case the video does not show properly.

Dr. Yang is probably the most prolific Taiji author of our time.  He has written many books on Taiji forms, applications, and fundamentals.  He has also translated many of the Taiji classics from Chinese to English.  Mostly focused on Yang style Taiji, he as done several videos showing forms, applications, exercises, push hands, etc.

Here is the complete list of Dr. Yang's books and videos.

Wow.  Imagine this kid thirty years from now - how good will he be then?

We used the 4th of July holiday to make a trip to north of California, into Oregon, all the way to the Crater Lake.  There were many many beautiful places and scenic routs to visit, which is another story, but our visit to Avenue of the Giants was of significance.

Avenue of the Giants is a 31 mile drive that goes in parallel to highway 101 through Humboldt Park, south of Eureka, CA.  It's a huge huge forest of redwood trees, some of them two to three thousand years old.  A very tranquil place, in which you feel history and old time.  The sublime feeling of being surrounded by these ancient trees makes one feel humble and insignificant.

I gave myself an hour or so to just walk in the forst, get away from the road, feel surrounded by the mystical feeling of the trees, and then meditate and do Taiji.  It was a great, unique feeling...

I always like reference material like this - here's a posture by posture drawing of the simplified 24-step Taiji form.  The page includes the names both in English and in Chinese, so if you're doing the 24-step form you might find it useful.  Another good resource on this is the description of the postures, with links to the drawings.

Also, speaking of references and resources, I ran across this Taiji Links page which contains many many links.  It's good to have a one-in-all reference but then it's hard finding material in it.  Nevertheless I'm putting it here so that I review it later and see if I can find anything specific on it to review more and write about.