Hello from the East Coast everyone!
I've been travelling so much lately that I'm just getting downright burnt out on it. And if all goes according to plan, this might just be my last travel for the remainder of 2009... allowing me to be back at the helm of the Saturday Tai-Chi classes!
I've been working on a project to make Tai-Chi more understandable, more appreciable, and more teachable. Some of you already know that I've been doing this piecemeal for over 2 decades now. But there's a time-sensitive project now that will require me to really buckle down and focus in on this. And that's what this post is all about.
The big question here is two-fold: How do we develop skill while fostering an increasingly deeper appreciation for the process of skill building?
And that's where we need to make what we do ultimately digestible. So let's look at food.
What attracts us to food? First, scent & appearance.
Then taste.
Then the feeling of it.
How do we do that with Tai-Chi?
Step 1: Appearance - posture (conveying powerful mastery of movement)
- Mastery of movement is evidenced by proper posture, control of fast/slow speed, difficulty of techniques, and coordination of proper body mechanics.
Step 2: Scent - aroma
- The aroma is created in movement arts by how well the practitioner not only displays the mastery of movement (appearance), but also conveys a feeling of intent with his/her movements.
Step 3: Taste - biomechanics
- After taking a bite of food, the eater chews the bite, breaking the components of the food down and mixing it in the mouth. This creates a specific taste. We need to do the same thing with movement by teaching the experience of proper, powerful movement, starting from the ground-up.
Step 4: Feeling - coordination to the point of subconsciousness
- The epicurean understands the worth of feeling the entirety of the process of eating. From preparation, to presentation, to consumption, to reflection, to digestion, it's all appreciated. Nothing's lost on such a person.
* But we need to TEACH people to be gourmets of movement.
* We need to make that message appealing to the masses.
* We need to make the curriculum progressive and scalable on ALL levels of Tai-Chi.
This is what I'll be working on systematizing and recording for the remainder of 2009. A lot of it is already outlined in the PDF that's kept on the SantaMonicaTaiChi Yahoo group files list, but there's so much more coming, and it's gonna be a whopper!
