Do tai chi!

I happily type away, from week to week, blithely pretending that words can somehow explain, or capture some essence of tai chi chuan and the martial arts. To some extent, they can. But there's a good reason that there isn't a huge selection of literature concerning the martial arts (apart from the surfeit of those books full of technique sequences...), and that's because it's inherently experiential and orally/physically transmitted. Really. I don't think I've ever learnt anything about the practice of tai chi from a book. I've learnt about theories and perspectives on tai chi, but nothing that helped me to do it. Maybe I could say I've drawn inspiration from reading, but not much more.
Every time that I have had an "Aha!" moment, it's come from training or discussion with Ian or others in the class.. On occasion, on checking a book or the Classics, I have found them to match my experience. So the literature can add weight to our findings, perhaps.

I haven't attended any tai chi seminars for a little while, but I am told that the fashion now is to record everything either by filming it or writing it down. Writing notes at a tai chi seminar is not doing tai chi. "Collecting" applications on film is not doing tai chi. Reading about tai chi is not doing tai chi. Certainly, writing about tai chi is not doing tai chi. I hope that this blog is mere entertainment between training sessions, just a bit of inspiration for your practice. I really would rather you were doing tai chi chuan than reading this blog. So go and train will you!