Comments | powerlibrarian: need some pink soap

powerlibrarian

need some pink soap

Apr 02, 2007 11:55

I had a great discussion with a former TaiChi person about what's missing from club. I have to say I agree with her when she says we're missing the battle scars and sweat. Everyone gets all caught up in "the paradigm" and in progressing slowly, and then they get all indignant when membership drops off like um...niagara falls. We blame people for ( Read more... )

Comments 8

kendokamel April 2 2007, 16:43:57 UTC

Isn't the first rule of Taichi Club, "Don't talk about Taichi Club"?

powerlibrarian April 2 2007, 18:17:37 UTC

might as well be. If you have some epiphany of understanding, keep it to yourself so you don't rob someone else of the struggle of coming to it themselves..... right?

arcana_mundi April 2 2007, 20:34:44 UTC

I wanted to learn Tai Chi for relaxation and stress relief. I was so excited about it. I got completely disgusted by how much time was spent kicking and punching bags and pretending to throw each other around. All I wanted was to learn to make my body flow through those beautiful movements, and if I was LUCKY I learned one new move (by which I mean: move this leg, move this arm, the end) every two weeks. If I wanted to kick ass, I'd have joined a different club, one with lots of sweaty sparring and straight-up conflict-oriented kapowie. I am very good at kicking ass. I have a fucking black belt in TKD, earned from the actual Grandmaster Chae Sun Yi, not some redneck asshat who thinks "dojo" is what you call a place where you learn TKD. I have years of experience in other asskicking arts. I wanted something meditative, soft, centering, and good ( ... )

powerlibrarian April 2 2007, 22:52:55 UTC

I think we're sort of talking about the same thing though ( ... )

arcana_mundi April 3 2007, 00:28:32 UTC

I can understand wanting to move beyond the form into the fight, I really can. But taking people who don't even know the form yet there seems... ugh. Confusing and pointless. And there never really seemed to be an instructor, just various people who would decide what was happening next. Madeleine was the only one I found particularly teacherly. I can't remember who else was a teacher, if you know what I mean. I remember people helping me, but that was most often you, and I think you told me you weren't an instructor ( ... )

powerlibrarian April 4 2007, 21:53:38 UTC

Yeah, the mode of instruction really HAS changed... and everything about club has changed in the past two years. Part of it has to do with Charles getting more entrenched in Kinesiology (hence the overload of talking about practicing and not actually practicing). But when I started, we were having club two nights a week. There would be three or four advanced students there and sometimes two or three instructors. So they would divide and conquer - with a group doing form, a group doing applications (the punch/block drills) and a group doing push hands or sword form or somehting. It was cool ( ... )

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