Workshop

Tai Chi and Open Focus

I am giving workshop in the Hibernian Hotel Leisure Centre on next Sunday January 3rd from 11am - 2.30pm.

The silent stillness of Tai Chi practice renews body mind and spirit. We will spend time in these soft flowing movements allowing them to heal and renew our bodies. This workshop is designed to introduce beginners to the practice and also to allow experienced tai chi students to deepen their understanding of the art.

We will practice open focus exercises to experience spaciousness within and without. These gentle deep exercises teach us how to open to a wider awareness of our body and the space in and around our body. (Bring an extra layer for the open focus session as people often cool down when sitting still).

To register text 0876616800 or email me @ taichimcilraith@yahoo.co.uk

Receiving Each Day as an Invitation

Each new day is a path of wonder, a different invitation. Days are where our lives gradually become visible.

Often it seems that we have to undertake the longest journey to arrive at what has been nearest all along. Mornings rarely find us so astounded at the new day that we are unable to decide between adventures. We take on days with the same conditioned reflex with which we wash and put on our clothes each day. If we could be mindful of how short our time is, we might learn how precious each day is. There are people who will never forget today. […]

The liturgy of dawn signals the wonder of the arriving day. Magic of darkness breaking through into color and light is such a promise of invitation and possibility. No wonder we always associate the hope and urgency of new beginning with the dawn. Each day is the field of brightness where the invitation of our life unfolds. A new day is an intricate and subtle matrix; written into its mystery are the happenings sent to awaken and challenge us.

No day is ever the same, and no day stands still; each one moves through a different territory, awakening new beginnings. A day moves forward in moments, and once a moment has flickered into life, it vanishes and is replaced by the next. It is fascinating that this is where we live, within an emerging lacework that continually unravels. Often a fleeting moment can hold a whole sequence of the future in distilled form: that unprepared second when you looked in a parent’s eye and saw death already beginning to loom. Or the second you noticed a softening in someone’s voice and you knew that a friendship was beginning. Or catching your partner’s gaze upon you and knowing the love that surrounded you. Each day is seeded with recognitions.

The writing life is a wonderful metaphor for this. The writer goes to his desk to meet the empty white page. As he settles himself, he is preparing himself, for visitation and voyage. Each memory, longing, and craft set the frame for what might emerge. He has no idea what will come. Yet despite its limitations, his creative work will find its own direction to form. Each of us is an artist of our days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and creative our time will become.

--John O'Donohue, from "To Bless the Space Between Us"

Thanks Deb for this great pic.

tai chi

        soft full engaging open

       breathing in breathing out

          advancing retreating

     spacious to eternity and beyond

           Suddenly 

           a bird call

           makes it seem



          (I don't know

           why) like a 

           holiday



           Like getting 

           a letter

           from Loraine.  

     

                   Cid Corman



          

          Laundromat



         Causal, sudsy

         social love

         at the tubs



         After all, ecstasy

         can't be constant



                  Loraine Niedecker

More Yielding

When I yield to my feelings and allow them to be, especially the uncomfortable ones I begin to experience freedom. I am no longer trying to escape (in food, television or even practice). I can simply experience the feeling and let it go.This allows me to welcome all feelings in myself and allow others their feelings too, without trying to fix or change them. When I realise deep in myself that feelings are not "real" or true "facts" but rather experiences coming into my awareness to be consciously felt. I can relax into each moment knowing that each feeling when fully allowed can teach me freedom. This freedom comes from getting to know my true nature beyond feelings, thoughts and tensions. That nature, which is ever present waiting for me to turn inward and experience it. The more I turn my attention to this still presence the more accessible it becomes. The choice is there in each moment, to pay attention to the distractions of mind or the stillness of presence.

Yielding

The Chinese word shooing means to yield, to relax, to lose to give up. It is said that when Cheng Man Ching trained with the famous Yang Chen-Fu he would be reminded daily to be shooing to be really really shooing."If you are a little bit not shooing you are in the state of a looser and in T'ai Chi you will be defeated."To me this means that as I practice I need to yield to each moment, to completely relax my body in each step and between each step. By becoming conscious of each disturbing thought, feeling or tension and letting them go as they arise, we yield to our practice. We become present in the moment not repressing or avoiding but yielding to and accepting what is here and now. In learning to do this we learn to live consciously rather than on automatic. Then instead of reacting in habitual manner to events in our lives we become more free to respond in new and fresh ways.

Tai Chi with St. Mary's students

Is this what you mean by Yielding?


Brush left knee and push.

What exactly am I doing?

Looking good.
Many thanks to Emer Hallihan for these photos.

RIPRAP



Lay down these words

Before your mind like rocks.

          placed solid, by hands

In choice of place, set

Before the body of the mind

           in space and time:

Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall

           riprap of things:

Cobble of milky way,

           straying planets,

These poems, people,

           lost ponies with

Dragging saddles

            and rocky sure-foot trails.

The words like an endless

           four- dimensional

Game of Go.

           ants and pebbles

In the thin loam,each rock a word 

           a creek-washed stone

Granite: ingrained

           with torment of fire and weight

Crystal and sediment linked hot

           all change, in thoughts,

As well as things.



      Gary Snyder

Knots In The Grain

"The Japanese term for song bushi or fushi means a whorl in the grain. This is what we call a knot,like a knot in wood. It is a very interesting sense of song - like the grain flows along and then there's a turbulence that whorls, and that's what they call a song." This quote is from an article by Gary Snyder about how his poetry emerges.

I have loved this image ever since I read the article many years ago and have found this idea of a turbulence in the energy very useful in understanding energy movement in Tai Chi and in life (what's the difference).I have often noticed that the postures that have given me most difficulty either in learning or teaching seem to produce a knot in me or the person I'm working with or in both of us. When we manage to unravel this knot something big has cleared or shifted. Then this posture has become very deeply embedded and understood in the body. Sometimes I even feel a healing of old wounds that my body has been holding. The time and love that goes into the unravelling unlocks the energy block causing the knot leaving me lighter and more free.

It seems to me that all the events in our lives also have energy. When we release the events energy as it happens we are free to move on. Sometimes however we don't or can't release the energy and a knot forms. Then we tell the story again and again or repeat the experience again and again until the knot is unravelled and more of our true energy and nature are available to us.For me this is the real work of our lives, to onravel all the knots from this life and the past so the veils are lifted and we are free to "BE".

Cultivating an eagle mind

Human qualities often come in clusters. Altruism, inner peace, strength, freedom, and genuine happiness thrive together like the parts of a nourishing fruit. Likewise, selfishness, animosity, and fear grow together. So, while helping others may not always be “pleasant,” it leads the mind to a sense of inner peace, courage, and harmony with the interdependence of all things and beings.

Afflictive mental states, on the other hand, begin with self-centeredness, with an increase in the gap between self and others. These states are related to excessive self-importance and self-cherishing associated with fear or resentment towards others, and grasping for outer things as part of a hopeless pursuit of selfish happiness. A selfish pursuit of happiness is a lose-lose situation: you make yourself miserable and make others miserable as well.

Inner conflicts are often linked with excessive rumination on the past and anticipation of the future. You are not truly paying attention to the present moment, but are engrossed in your thoughts, going on and on in a vicious circle, feeding your ego and self-centeredness.

This is the opposite of bare attention. To turn your attention inside means to look at pure awareness itself and dwell without distraction, yet effortlessly, in the present moment.

If you cultivate these mental skills, after a while you won’t need to apply contrived efforts anymore. You can deal with mental perturbations like the eagles I see from the window of my hermitage in the Himalayas deal with crows. The crows often attack them, diving at the eagles from above. But, instead of doing all kinds of acrobatics, the eagle simply retracts one wing at the last moment, lets the diving crow pass, and then extends its wing again. The whole thing requires minimal effort and causes little disturbance.

Being experienced in dealing with the sudden arising of emotions in the mind works in a similar way.

By Matthieu Ricard

From; This is your brain on bliss

Loving Yourself

When I was a child I was taught "Love your neighbour as yourself".My interpretation of this was that loving your neighbour was the important part and that to love oneself was selfish.
Since working with Lester Levinson's release technique this has changed. While at a releasing workshop last summer we were given what appeared to be a simple exercise.
"Look in the mirror and keep releasing (letting go) disapproval of yourself until you have only love feelings for yourself."
Sounds simple, but there was a huge resistance in me to doing this exercise.Being the persistant type I kept at it wondering all the while what the block could be.
Then a memory came back. As a child I loved to play in front of the mirror dressing up and pretending all sorts. When my mother cought me she would scold me and warn me that if I didn't stop "Barnaby" (the devil) would appear to me in the mirror and take me to hell. ( Maybe this is how I got my aversion to seeing myself in the mirror and to loving myself.) In any case once this memory came back a huge weight lifted. I could genuinely begin to love myself and my image in the mirror. This change in my way of relating with myself has transformed how I see and relate to many others in my life. Loving feelings and apreciation come much more frequently. John (my husband) tells me it is like living with the person he got a brief glimpse of when times were really good.

“We learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing
or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same.” - Martha Graham.
Thanks to Michael for this quote.

Cultivating An Eagle Mind

Human qualities often come in clusters. Altruism, inner peace, strength, freedom, and genuine happiness thrive together like the parts of a nourishing fruit. Likewise, selfishness, animosity, and fear grow together. So, while helping others may not always be “pleasant,” it leads the mind to a sense of inner peace, courage, and harmony with the interdependence of all things and beings.

Afflictive mental states, on the other hand, begin with self-centeredness, with an increase in the gap between self and others. These states are related to excessive self-importance and self-cherishing associated with fear or resentment towards others, and grasping for outer things as part of a hopeless pursuit of selfish happiness. A selfish pursuit of happiness is a lose-lose situation: you make yourself miserable and make others miserable as well.

Inner conflicts are often linked with excessive rumination on the past and anticipation of the future. You are not truly paying attention to the present moment, but are engrossed in your thoughts, going on and on in a vicious circle, feeding your ego and self-centeredness.

This is the opposite of bare attention. To turn your attention inside means to look at pure awareness itself and dwell without distraction, yet effortlessly, in the present moment.

If you cultivate these mental skills, after a while you won’t need to apply contrived efforts anymore. You can deal with mental perturbations like the eagles I see from the window of my hermitage in the Himalayas deal with crows. The crows often attack them, diving at the eagles from above. But, instead of doing all kinds of acrobatics, the eagle simply retracts one wing at the last moment, lets the diving crow pass, and then extends its wing again. The whole thing requires minimal effort and causes little disturbance.

Being experienced in dealing with the sudden arising of emotions in the mind works in a similar way.

By Matthieu Ricard

From; This is your brain on bliss