Wordsworth look out...

I have just come back from a week in the beautiful countryside of Derbyshire, and I am full of reflections on nature...
On one hand, tai chi can be seen as a skill learnt, a technique or a craft, the refinement of which adds to one's skill and enjoyment in life.
Another way of looking, it could be argued, reveals tai chi as adding nothing in particular to us, but instead stripping away defective, inefficient, and unattractive movements. I like to think of tai chi chuan as perfecting our human movement, after a week in the dales and on the moors observing eagles, crows, sheep and other beasts playing out their own essences in movement. At some point, an eagle learnt its skill-at-flight, the sheep where best to graze and how to keep a watchful eye out and so on, but when we observe them now any sense of technique per se has disappeared. Something to aim at on my part.
We are upright creatures, and should express that. We haven't the natural tools such as claws or horns for the stand-up fight, and this we express also. We are capable of more than just a bloodthirsty fight-to-the-death, and tai chi chuan gives us this option. We enjoy play, and there is much of this in tai chi.
I wonder if it's possible to direct teaching along the lines of revealing natural movements rather than filling people up with supposed technique? Without losing the discipline and form of tai chi, can we convey its essence simply?
I shall be back to my normal less ponderous self soon I am sure...

Martial arts for helping people?

So I've been thinking lately that tai chi is rather insufficient. Not the actual art, but rather the scope of its practice. You see, I rather think that tai chi chuan could be so much more, as could most of the martial arts. Rather than simply being engaging hobbies, could the martial arts not be used to actually help people, people who perhaps aren't willing to do the years of training that we have but nonetheless could learn or gain something as a result of our practice? I just don't know if its good enough these days to pursue such a time-consuming hobby without some reference to the outside world as it were, bar the odd scrap-avoidance or evasion of someone cycling on the pavement...
I know what you're thinking: that I'm on some mission to save the world, to help the dying babies and endangered animals and all...well, maybe I am a bit. But I'm under no illusions. Most of the world's ills would remain untouched by even the most liberal application of tai chi. But some particular ills...mishandling of temper, tendencies towards destructive violence, traumas from physical encounters...I have deep-rooted hunches that tai chi chuan could help in all of the above situations. I'm not sure how. And there don't seem to be many people out there finding out. But I think I'm going to start....anyone interested? Is anyone willing to stick their necks out beyond the usual parapet of martial arts schools, styles, techniques and whatnot and see if they could use their art to connect with the greater world and enrich it somehow? The Order of Quixote maybe... Yes, probably. Now where's my lance and helmet...?