There’s a time for everything.Be sensitive to it.It’s not what you want.It’s what is.Push at the wrong time, you fail.Rest at the wrong time you fail.When young, you have more than you need.When old, less needs to be more.Eventually you must learn to let go.Then let go of letting go.Until there is nothing left.Only then you can die in peace. Continue reading There’s A Time…
Sometimes you have to dig deep, like REALLY deep.Trying to stop the body going into shock with pain.Reducing one day at a time to one breath at a time.Controlling the adrenaline from fear.When you want to run or curl up, facing it as a warrior.When you feel so angry you want to burn your world down.Controlling reckless rage and the desire to kill or maim.When I see advice from those that have never been there, I almost wish it on them.Because until you’ve REALLY been there, you can never know.Trash your ‘feel good’ memes, your fake rose tinted spectacles, and … Continue reading Digging Deep…
There are always arguments about whether Tai Chi is for self cultivation/health or for self defence, but are they mutually exclusive? It’s often said that the highest levels of self cultivation cannot work together with dealing with violence but I … Continue reading Tai Chi For Health/Defence?
Is the purpose if life to be happy? It seems to me that the ‘successful’ people thrusting their ‘happiness’ in our face on every social media media platform every day are actually the opposite, behind their masks (and I know plenty of them) they are deeply troubled and flawed people. They are using that facade to sell ‘happiness on a stick’ to other deeply troubled and flawed people. They think that attention, fame and wealth will create the contentment they seek and their customers are forever chasing the tail of happiness that is just disappearing around the corner in front … Continue reading Is The Purpose Of Life To Be Happy?
I’m a man’s man. We don’t show pain.Not physical, emotional or mental.We don’t accept help of any kind.We’d rather die than ask. We aren’t afraid of getting hurt in a fight.We are afraid of being beaten.We don’t read instructions or maps.We’d rather die than not be the breadwinner. All emotion is sucked inward.It comes out as silence or rage.You can’t make us talk about them.You can’t make us express them. We just don’t have the capacity.We’re a dying breed.Often through passive suicide.Because we also don’t go to the doctor.Better to die early before we need assistance.Or get frail, or useless. … Continue reading I’m A Man’s Man
Do you feel guilty when others around you are soaked in misery? Don’t. Because if they are genuinely suffering, empathy requires a soft front and a strong back to help, you suffering along with them out of guilt doesn’t help. There are also manipulative people who use and exaggerate their own suffering, sometimes even unwittingly, because they can see it makes you feel guilty and they either want to control you or just enjoy making you miserable as well. If you are an empathic person this is really difficult, these people might be at work, family or friends, it’s all … Continue reading Dealing With Toxic People
Metta – Patient/Kindness We have to start by being patient and kind to ourselves. Then toward those we love. Then toward those we like. Then toward those we are ambivalent towards. Then toward those we don’t like. Finally toward those we hate. This is true Metta. Continue reading Metta – Patient Kindness
Insight while training this morning… Thank goodness the morning nausea has gone (except fort the day of the Tensho seminar 🤷♂️), but I still wake up with chronic fatigue, meaning that even my morning wash and dressing has to be done in stages with rests between each stage, followed by a rest with coffee and toast before I can train. Tai Chi opens my spine, deep front line and through the connection, all the joints and myofascia. Despite the underlying fatigue and pain from the surgeries, amputation, cancer treatment and chronic arthritis in all of my body, the training makes … Continue reading Do I Want My Youth Back?
The history of our Dojo building: An Uphill Struggle by Brian JoyceReaders familiar with Chatham Hill will be aware of the martial arts centre part way up on the southwest side. What they perhaps don’t know is that the site was used for religious purposes for about two hundred years. In the early nineteenth century, the families living on the Hill had a dubious reputation. Looking back in 1873, the Chatham Observer felt that: “there has always been…a moral element on Chatham Hill very difficult to subjugate; a wild, fitful, bohemian sort of spirit, often breaking out unexpectedly and requiring … Continue reading History Of Our Dojo Building
Why do we take such a black and white view on dealing with violence? You can’t view violence without looking at peace and conversely you can’t view peace without looking at violence. One only exists because of the other. Martial Arts traditionally understood why this balance is important and for those of us that have taught peace and law officers at the sharp end of violence we have had to teach this balance. You all know my mantra of ‘a soft front and strong back’ because good manners, politeness, kindness and gentleness, patience, tolerance and compassion are the mark of … Continue reading War And Peace
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