TAITN
It all began for me with my Taiji and Qigong teacher in 1992 Sifu Bruno Paluk when I asked him, “I understand how Taiji is good for peace and relaxation, but I asked how is it a martial art?” He said don’t let it deceive you we practice slow so that we can move faster and with more power. He went over to a pole supporting the dojo, took a moment, relaxed, dropped his weight and struck the pole with a force I had never seen from a human. The whole ceiling from one end of the dojo to the other shook; it was like a tornado hit. I stood motionless in awe. He said, “if something moves forward, something has to move backward, if something moves up, something has to move down. We do this by moving from our center; if one thing moves everything moves. There is no isolated motion. It’s called power through relaxation.” I was in my twenties teaching and playing tennis and I thought to myself, “wow if I could do that on the tennis court.
“That’s where it all started. We created Taijitennis together. He would work the sword and I would work the racquet through slow motion moving postures, his application the martial arts, mine tennis. This just scratched the surface of what Taiji and Qigong has to offer. He and his teachers took me deep into the essence of Taiji called spiral power; the power that moves through Nature and through ourselves. Through the process, the best I can describe it, is I fell in love. I fell in love with the Divine moving through me, within me, and for the last thirty years this love affair has only gotten stronger. Recently, I began wielding the sword as Bruno did, but not for the martial arts. From the Yang Style Long Form and the spiraling motions of tennis came a form that’s primary purpose is to cultivate spiral power or Nature’s power within and be able to apply it to all that we do.
The literal translation of Taiji is the connecting of, or fusing within, the Earth Yin energy from below and the Heaven, star energy or Yang energy from above with a Divine spark. Drawing energy from below and from above, the female and male energies, is at the heart of all Ancient cultures and their creation stories. I was handed a book from an Elder and Grandmother of the Earth the other day, Connie Batten. It’s called The Time Of The Black Jaguar by Arkan Lushwala; a Peruvian shaman living here in Northern New Mexico. In the first chapter, The Message of the Eagle, it says, “In the beginning there was only a point of light. The point of light fused its feminine and masculine energies and exploded, generating seven stars. All at once, these seven stars also fused their masculine and feminine energies and exploded, generating the thirteen creators of this world, who manifested the existence of all beings through their singing and dancing…”. “The dancers formed a circle standing on top of the open space of nothingness, each one of them carrying a staff with which they banged on the floor of nothingness calling it to become something. The first thing to appear before them was a tree that was an animal.”
“While the dancers of Creation continued with their movements and songs, fruits began to appear in the branches of the tree, which are now all the animal species and all the plants that reside on Earth. One by one they detached from the tree and found their place on the terrestrial space that the dancers had called to solidify itself from nothingness. In this way the world and its inhabitants were created.” “At the end, the dancers who sang the Creation of the world decided to leave a species on Earth that had qualities similar to those of themselves. They created women and men and left them with the mission to care for the rest of Creation through the power of their heart and their capacity to produce refined vibrations. The first humans were born to be guardians of the memory for the original design of life, guardians of the memory that resides in the song and dance of Creation. Keeping this memory alive in their heart and singing it back to all that lives became their gift, their mission, and the foundation of a beautiful way of life.”
You are invited to come dance with us as we learn and move with the power of Nature and just maybe through the cultivation of refined vibrations there may be those who are moved to sing. We would love for you to join us!
