Tag: Tai Chi

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Use Your Calendar

Steve Rowe

In my 50 years of training I always put the years training and seminar dates in my calendar first and then worked everything else around them where possible. Every year in June I do my following year’s calendar and give the dates out to all my students well in advance so they can do the same. Anyone that trains with me knows that every seminar will contain a lot of information that will never be given again. I view my calendar a month in advance, then each week and each day to remind me of what I’m doing and teaching. … Continue reading Use Your Calendar

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Waiting For God

Steve Rowe

Waiting For God I feel you looking out of my eyes,Listening through my ears,Tasting with my tongue,Smelling through my nose. But this vehicle won’t pass another MOT,The joints are rusty,Tissue is infected,It can barely run,It’s about ready for the knackers fire. It was elegant,A pleasure to drive,Would accelerate rapidly,Stop and turn on a sixpence,A reminder of classic times. Your consciousness permeates every cell,Always aware and alive,Observing yourself,When the body transmutes,The shape changes But consciousness is immortal. Continue reading Waiting For God

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Tai Chi Is A Martial Art

Steve Rowe

Yang style Tai Chi is a ‘standard’ form of Chinese Kung Fu. It is a distillation of other arts and the techniques and principles are clearly recognisable in both Chinese and Japanese arts. Every hand shape in the gold standard Yang Chen Fu form and the internal mechanisms that work them can be found in a good version of Tensho (Rokkishu) kata that also has its origins in White Crane Kung Fu. Every technique in the form can be effectively used through the ‘gates’ of the arms generally can be applied in locking, throwing, blocking, striking, strangling, choking, cavity pressing, … Continue reading Tai Chi Is A Martial Art

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Shamanism In Tai Chi

Steve Rowe

Shamanism in Tai Chi. We focus mainly on the snake, crane and tiger, these 3 animals are within every technique in a variety of ways. Snake is bound to the earth, our primalenergies and reptilian brain. It represents our qi energy, the way we move against the earth, the way we ‘coil’ bonelessly in movement, wrap around the opponent and escape grips and holds. It also represents the ‘spit’ and venom of a sudden attack. Tiger represents our mammalian energies, our powerful intention, qi projection, bone, tendon and muscular power, our structural integrity in framing our body, tearing techniques and … Continue reading Shamanism In Tai Chi

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I’m A Man’s Man

Steve Rowe

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

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Do I Want My Youth Back?

Steve Rowe

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?

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Look To The Old to Understand The New

Steve Rowe

温故 (On-ko) is to ask old things. 知新 (Chi-shin) is to know new things. This is really interesting, the idea or principle of learning should be properly understood and permeate everything in our lives and particularly our martial arts. We are often guided toward modern business and spiritual gurus wasting a lot of time and money, not really understanding that there’s nothing ‘new’ in the universe and that truth stands for all time in all things. If we know how to look, the roots are deep and worth researching. For me, ‘truth’ in the way the world works, the underlying … Continue reading Look To The Old to Understand The New