Tai Chi and Chi Kung Forum: May Gathering 2009 – 16th &17th May
Sunday dawned bright and sunny; some people got up early and played a quiet Tai chi form in the lovely gardens, others learnt some new Chi Kung exercises indoors and some of us had a lie-in. After breakfast, Sara Mokone led a lively warm-up Chi Kung session outside on the lawn, building on Saturday’s workshop where we had learnt to ‘massage our meridians’. Once we were warmed up and duly massaged, Sheila Aimson took us through the beautiful Wuji Gong Earth and Heaven sequence again. This is traditionally practiced facing all four directions beginning with the East, thinking of spring. Sheila had introduced this on Saturday and taking us through it again on Sunday really consolidated our learning – I could still remember it a week later (with a little help from the handout). It is a calm, reflective, meditative sequence, and very powerful. I shall practice it over the summer and hope to be able to pass it on to my groups next autumn.
The highlight of Sunday morning was learning different ways of breathing with John Barber. With a vast experience of diverse disciplines – well suited to our theme of East meets West – John now teachers people with serious health problems to develop practices whereby they can help themselves. (For more on John Barber’s background, see the end of this report.) Introduced by Bill, who had hugely benefitted from his methods in his own battle against cancer, John began his workshop on breathing by explaining about volumes of breathe and levels of breathing. Here follows a taster of the many things he explained and did in his wonderful two hour workshop with us. Our lung tissue (if spread out flat) measures ¼ of an acre, and it is important to make use of it all - not to let the distant places in our lungs become dysfunctional and die off from under-use. With normal breathing (tidal) we only take in 0.5 litre of air; with complemental breathing (abdominal, filling the bottom lobes of our lungs) we gain 3 litres, and with supplemental intercostal breathing we gain another 1.5 litres. After clear explanations of what happens in the body during the process of breathing, and how this affects other organs, John got us practising abdominal breathing (which I am doing as I write this!) which helps keep the immune system (and hence the lymphatic system) healthy. He explained: ‘You breathe to increase the alkalinity of the bloodstream’: too much acid can lead to a whole range of adverse medical conditions like osteoporosis.
Then, after shoulder circling exercises to loosen up our chests and several practice sessions (with physiological explanations), we finally managed three layered breathing. We then learnt how to direct our breath to different sides and to specific organs. His final session was about breathing to help the brain; first we did right/left breathing and
then a Daoist ‘group of Five’ breathing exercise – useful when the brain needs a spurt of oxygen, for example in an examination or before a difficult meeting. In two hours, John had covered with us what he normally does in one day. It was absolutely fascinating and we all voted for a follow-up session
Also on Sunday there were six members presentations, some short and practical (for example, Alison on a one-minute meditation technique, Anne-Marie demonstrating a e element hand mudra), and others about different approaches to teaching Tai chi principles and applications of these principles. Sue Hargreaves told us about ‘Extend’ (see below) where some teachers have been trained to incorporate Tai Chi principles like alignment and rooting in their exercise to music groups, and where we as tutors can do courses to learn more about anatomy and physiology and relevant medical issues. Maggi taught us a Five Element Chi Kung sequence, and Laurent demonstrated ‘le petit circuit’ as practiced in ‘L’art du chi’ a chain of French Tai chi schools; he packed into half an hour one year’s worth of syllabus, with us moving, visualising, and breathing in different ways. (Web-site reference below). We heard from Laurent Haquin about Maggie’s Centres for cancer care, and how some centres offer Tai Chi and Chi Kung classes to help patients and carers deal with the stress of coping with serious illness.
Mealtimes and tea breaks gave us opportunities to network and to sit with people and learn more about the things that were covered during the sessions. All in all, a very rewarding, varied and interesting week-end. I not only learnt many things to pass on to my groups but also lots of things that were useful to my own health. It was my first May Gathering and it will certainly not be my last.
Jane Willis
Tai Chi and Chi Kung Forum: May Gathering 2009 – Sunday 17th May
Copyright © 2009, TCCKF, All Rights Reserved
Notes and web-sites
John Barber was born in Rotherham and moved to the Scottish borders at the age of three where he grew up. He joined the army at 15 and his boxing teacher, a martial arts enthusiast trained in Singapore, soon took him under his wing. John pursued his interest in martial arts, techniques of mind calming and the related physiology throughout his 34 year army career. He has had many teachers including Nandini Devi and Sam Singh for yoga for meditation. His eclectic mix of techniques and practices, drawn from such diverse disciplines as yoga, Tibetan Buddhism, Chinese as well as Burmese martial arts and traditional medicines, combined with his extensive knowledge of anatomy and physiology have made him a well respected teacher and presenter. He currently lives with his wife near Malvern where his primary practice is working one-to-one, teaching people with serious health problems to develop practices with which they can help heal themselves.
EXTEND provides recreational movement to music for men and women over-sixty and for less able people of all ages. Their mission is to promote health, increase mobility and independence, improve strength, co-ordination and balance and to counteract loneliness and isolation, thereby enhancing the Quality of Life Over the years EXTEND has trained over 3,000 teachers of which 1249 are in circulation and, of those, 453 hold classes that are open to the public.
http://www.extend.org.uk/
L’art du ch’i http://www.art-of-chi.co.uk/
Maggie’s Centres http://www.cancerbackup.org.uk/ or simply Google Maggie’s Centre
