Tai Chi in Linsen Park

Okay...that is not me in the picture, but I did take tai chi in Linsen Park which is so close to where I am staying. A man named Edward (either that is his English name or he has a Chinese name that sounds remarkably like Edward) taught the class. I approached him after one of his sessions last week and asked him if it'd be okay if I join in and he not only said yes but went out of his way to make me feel welcome and comfortable. So then it rained a whole bunch and I assumed that the classes would not be held in the rain, but it was sunny this past Friday, so I went to join in.

First let me say that people over the age of 30 or 40 in Taiwan, as a rule, are amazing in that many of them make it to the park early every morning or late each night to get in some form of exercise (walking, stretching, aerobics, tai chi, etc). Even 80 and 90 year old people can be found circling wrists and ankles and doing simple repetitive motions. I would not be caught dead in Rittenhouse Square in Philly doing kicks and jumping jacks and weird breathing, walking, flailing, hitting, massaging, and stretching motions, but here, anything goes. Its like a surrealist scape...at 7am in the park, it appears (to a westerner) as if the people have collectively gone a little bit off the deep end. Under the veranda a man digs his elbow into a woman's groin and pats her stomach. Another woman stands behind, holding the passive woman by her arm pits. They repeat jabbing and massaging rituals on each other as nonchalantly as I might pull out a stick of gum and stick it in my mouth. So I don't seem like I am staring, I turn my back to them and then across the lawn I can't miss a group of about 15 people with purple shirts and pink pants on. They are playing some kind of music. There are words on the recording too (maybe instructions?). I can't discern if they have a leader of the pack or not, but they are simultaneously swiping their limbs through space. From an (again westerner's) and dancer's point of view they move like the church choir in Sister Act, but they do larger full-body movements but with an added bit of awkward reservation. The movement is full, and busy, and quick like calisthenics but far far less self-indulgent than jazz-er-cise. I mean it seems like they are there for joy and healing and a release, but they don't feel the need to SHOW it. Its more like a microwave concept where it radiates from inside to out. The whole display makes me think about layers of tackiness and self indulgence and inhibitions and subtlety in public displays of movement that are maybe not meant to be "watched".

The group I practiced with was much less "showy" and they just kind of did their tai chi thing together without much fuss. I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb, but it was well worth hanging in there because what a smart technique it is.... We began with finding an internal breath that massages your inside organs but doesn't bring tension into anything else. The body stays grounded, simple, and aligned. Then keeping this root, this energy, from the inside, we found the momentum of our arms, letting the joints hang, glide, and swing. We used this trajectory to literally tap into every obvious muscle group in the body (ultimately hitting ourselves) and thus waking up the skin, connective tissue, and other body parts that lie beneath. This pattern of movement worked its way down...all the way to our calves. Then we did some more breathing and swinging. It seemed like the point was to find these simple energy pathways and joint-folding pathways while rotating and cycling the torso and stabilizing the lower limbs. We did a little bit of leg lifting but the emphasis was on raising things from the center and softening what is not needed. I feel like there is much more that I could say, but I should probably get my ass to many more of the sessions before I pretend to call it my practice.

but from a dance perspective, to sum up, some things that this experience makes me interested in =

• how much of what happens internally must I be able to show or exhibit?
• how do practice, consistency, discipline, participation, just showing up, regularity, etc. affect a form?
• How does the heat/temperature/humidity/rain affect the form?
• How does our mind/body connection manifest itself?
• When do we think about it? Is important to show we are thinking about it?
• Are there limits to where, when, with who, or how I can think about it?
• Since it is mind/body connection, then often Think means Embody?
• What do people in Philadelphia embody? What do people in Taiwan embody?
• What does it mean to embody?
• Out of body experience???
• How much of embodying centers on attention? how much centers on experience? how much is related to flow?
• Forms instilled with ideas. Ideas instilled with forms.

Okay thats enough questions for one day.

later.