Tag: Tai Chi

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What’s Your Personality?

Steve Rowe

What is your personality? The word personality comes from the word ‘persona’ which in turn comes from the mask that actors wore on stage before the use of microphones to project their voices, thus ‘person sonar’. We use different personalities or ‘masks’ according to the situation, so most people have a mask for the public, one for their friends, one for their family and then there is their true self. Knowing who you are and what the masks are is an important skill in inhabiting a body or ‘being human’. The problem comes when we get so used to wearing … Continue reading What’s Your Personality?

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Deeper Understanding & Insight

Steve Rowe

Maybe too much information has also been killing off the deeper understandings and insights to be gained in martial arts. There’s a lot to be said for mindful repetition of skilled movement and too much ‘thinking’ and information overload blocks these insights. Because of the structure of our society we confuse the more we know about something with actually knowing it. There’s a big difference between accumulating knowledge with the simplicity of doing it with a few basic principles that encompass the knowledge to be gained through repetitious practice rather than tripping over mental information that couldn’t possibly be accomplished … Continue reading Deeper Understanding & Insight

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Learning To Look Inward

Steve Rowe

We never really know ourselves because we can’t look back down our own eyes. In hindsight I realise that I’ve never wanted to be alive so have never had the need to joyfully engage. I never got on with my family and couldn’t wait to leave home, hated school so didn’t bother to go or learn, failed all exams miserably. Social life was pubs and nightclubs because I couldn’t think of anything else so just ran with the gangs. Didn’t read a book until I started meditating in my 20’s and then couldn’t stop, because there was no internet and … Continue reading Learning To Look Inward

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How Grief Occurs

Steve Rowe

I was watching a TV programme and someone asked a man whose son had been murdered how he was doing and he said “fine, for 10 seconds a day – then I remember that my son is dead.” This is an excellent description of grief or PTSD where you don’t just suffer it once, that sense of dread keeps recurring in waves again and again. Every day I wake up I feel fine for 10 seconds and then I move and the realisation, shock and horror of having my leg amputated occurs again and this still occurs many times a … Continue reading How Grief Occurs

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Training For Life

Steve Rowe

When you finally find what’s absolutely right for you in your martial arts training and meditation and you internalise it you don’t need to rationalise why you do it. I practice every day religiously, like saying my prayers and have practiced in my hospital bed laying, sitting, in a wheelchair (my current location for training) in my garden, in parks in my Dojo and every other location you can think of. I train for me. Not to fight anymore, not for how it looks and not for what others might think of me or what I do. It’s deeply personal, … Continue reading Training For Life

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Chants And Chakras

Steve Rowe

Teaching Mikey this morning he made the point that I should record some of the things that I would rarely get to teach and this morning we were discussing how I train using a chant to alchemise the chakras. The chant is traditionally used to raise the kundalini – the energy up the spine. To do this we have to release and then activate the areas of the spine that relate to the chakras. The chant is Ra Ma Da Sa – Sa Sei So Hung.Ra is the root chakra and raises the powerful life or death jing energy.Ma is … Continue reading Chants And Chakras

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The Power Of Insight

Steve Rowe

It’s important to understand insight. We create a mindful state to allow insight to arise. It arises from the unconditioned, immortal, unborn, unformed part of our mind and by its very nature escapes definition. Insight creates wisdom, it allows our mind to see what is otherwise hidden. Therefore it is an important skill to develop. Good posture allows deeper breathing.Deeper breathing calms the body.As the body calms so does the emotions.As the emotions calm so does the mind.By focusing on our breathing this develops our sensitivity and focuses the mind.This opens a portal into the unconditioned, immortal, wordless mind.This allows … Continue reading The Power Of Insight

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How I Meditate

Steve Rowe

How I meditate. As many people have problems and I’ve meditated consistently for many years I thought I’d give some personal information. Deep breathing calms the body, the emotions and the mind. So I sit and allow it to do it’s work. I ‘leave both doors open’ so thoughts and emotions come and go but the breathing will make them subside into stillness. I find my natural breathing pattern by waiting to breathe in until the body does it for me in a natural way from the dantien point. During this time as I’m waiting, I separate from my body … Continue reading How I Meditate

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A Soft Front And A Strong Back

Steve Rowe

Why do we feel vulnerable? We were quadrupeds that stood up to become bipeds possibly to walk further in the heat to get food but essentially we’re still built like quadrupeds. This means that we face the world and others with our ‘underbelly’. That’s our vulnerability. To understand this is important, we naturally have a soft front and a strong back and can use this to our advantage. Meet the world with your empowered ‘yin’ front, meet it with courtesy, politeness and a caring, giving, empathic, compassionate front. Just understand that it is supported by a strong back. Train your … Continue reading A Soft Front And A Strong Back

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Mindfulness All Day

Steve Rowe

Mindfulness is not something you do for an hour a day it’s something thing you do to reinforce the mindful state for an hour a day. Then during the day you are able to watch your mind and all the decisions you make. We often make decisions mindlessly and based on the the way we have been indoctrinated by others, mindfulness allows us to review our choices and decide from a far more insightful point of view. Mindfulness showed me how to decide based on compassion, when anger arose instead of wanting to hurt or punish someone I could make … Continue reading Mindfulness All Day