T'ai Chi Chih: Joy Thru Movement; 7

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I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry First time that you've ever joined us, stand up and do these movements with us. They're very, very easy to do. Feet shoulder with the part, get the hands ready, breathe, and begin. Our word for this week is clarity. And as we unclutter our mind, we begin to find that a lot of the tension maybe that we're carrying begins to

smooth away. If you really feel that you need to, you can always pick up those thoughts later. For right now, just let yourself be here with a movement. Very simple, raise the toes, come up onto the balls of the feet, hands to the ceiling, roll it over, come back down, raise the toes, one more time. Good, and now with this next one, just move the left foot over to the right, raise the hands to the chest, bring them back, separate, and close. Good, breathe, isn't it nice just to be here doing what it is that you need to be doing? This is your special time for you. Push pull. With push pull, we're going to make an ellipse. We're going to do a 60 -40 weight with 60 on this hand that's opposite the leg that's out, 40 on the other hand, but we're not going to see anything. We're going to trace an ellipse with the fingertips over

the top, bring it back to the chest, not throwing out over the shoulders. Push out, back heel is up just a little bit, bring it back. What I really like about push pull is I feel that I can push things out without really giving it a whole lot of thought. We want to be able to let all this mental try and go. Instead we just do the movements and see what happens. Here's our last one, bottom of the ellipse, the top of the ellipse, and close. Let's do it on the right side and begin. Here's one, bring it back, breathe, here's two, bring it back, straight to your chest, here's three, as you can see, it's not a muscular pushing out, it's just feeling that with our mind, with our emotions, with

our body, everything is pushing out into the world, come back, and then here's our last one. Push, feel that 60, 40, the 60 now is in the left hand, bring them back, totally even. And breathe, next one is pulling in the energy, middle fingers are on tender, we're imagining from the farthest star in the universe, the energy is coming through till it gets to our hands. Left foot is out, toes are up, hands are ready, this is a very receptive position. Touch that finger on each hand, the middle finger, gently let yourself receive, and come forward, let yourself receive. You don't need to expect it, you don't need to worry, is it going to come? That's too much mental thinking, let yourself just

be clear. As the word says, this is our word for the day, will it won't it happen? Here's our last one, and close. Notice that by just putting one part of yourself in that receptive position, now the other side, and again, you might touch that middle finger, you don't have to, just think about that, feel it, just for a minute, that that's where the energy is coming out. Up the arms, and inside your body there's this wonderful glow that happens. Three, good. Just by doing this movement, you put yourself in a receptive position, you'd put your hands out like this to receive a baby, wouldn't you? Or maybe to hug a loved one? This is our last one, with this one, bring the foot back,

separate, and close, and breathe. The next one that we're going to do is the learning of the new movement for today. That movement is pulling taffy, basic, and I say basic because we will be using this same movement with three other movements that we will do, and the idea is to learn this one so that we can build on it. Using the thought clarity, let yourself know that simplicity and clarity kind of go together. So let yourself just be simple in the way that you think about this. Let me show you what it looks like so you can see it's really a very smooth, gentle, easy movement to do. Step over, and you close, get ready, let the foot out, pull across, and close, and get ready, you let the foot

out, you pull across, and close, you pull across, and you close. Does that look nice? Want to try it? Well, let's start. Let's take it apart a little bit. Sometimes by learning the parts of something, it becomes much much easier. I think that the first time that you were learning to walk, you weren't quite sure whether you were supposed to use the whole foot or just the tiptoes, and so you used just the tiptoes as you were starting. Well, it's kind of that way with each movement that we're teaching here on this program. So breathe. Now, what you're going to do with the hands is, if you're going to go to the left and if you noticed, I moved to the left. It's a side movement. When I touch that left leg, that hand is going to come up to the waist just as far as the waist, cover with the other hand, and I'm going to turn

just slightly. Not some people get themselves moved in funny directions. What we're going to do is just pull here. This hand that has come down at a diagonal is your yon hand. Your other hand is your yin hand. It's receptive and close. Then touch that leg, get ready, cover, pull, cross, bring it in, and close. So you see you're going to do it one time and close to the left, then one time stepping over and close to the right. So each time that you do it, you're going to have a closing time. That's your breathing time, all right? So now touch that leg, get the hand ready, cover it, slide the hands. The name of this movement is pulling taffy. What you do is you feel that taffy right at this point. You can feel just how sticky it is and close. Touch, get ready,

and pull it across and close. And then touch, get ready, pull it across and close. Touch, get ready. You see what I mean by get ready? You touch, you bring it up as far as the waist. You cover with the other hand. This, and notice that the hands are overlapped. Some people like to do just a little pulling taffy here, just with the hands. There's not really the power in it. Get your, you get your whole waist into it so that it's turning. So that it's like opening a jar and getting a good grip on it, you turn it easily. So touch the left leg, get the hand ready, cover it, and you let the foot out. Notice that the heels are even, are your heels even? Pull across, step over and close, and touch, get ready, cover. Let the foot out, pull across. Feel this hand coming

down at a diagonal. Feel it coming down right to the side of your body. This hand here feels like a wonderful position, doesn't it? Like you've really stepped out. See, the fingers started to that wall, then they're going to end up to this wall. So it's a simple thing. Pulls across, you just go right up to the end of your waist and then out. What's wonderful is that as you're doing this, you don't want to go too high with a hand, kind of like a Roman senator giving a speech. But also if you had a pizza in your hand or maybe you were passing out or a dervish at a party, it'd fall right all over your blouse or you don't want to go too low because then it would fall all over the carpet or maybe on your shirt if you were passing something. So you want to stay right at waist level, you want to keep your hand right under that tray and pass to everybody. From now on you'll never be able to have a party without thinking of Tai Chi Cha. I think that's a good idea. Now breathe again,

get ready, touch that left leg, get the hand ready, cover. Let the foot out. Pull across, pull across, pull across. This hand is you on, remember, it's the one that's keeping you balanced, step over and close. Now the other half of number one, let the foot out, pull across, step over and close. Get ready, touch the leg, bring the hand up, cover it, let the foot out. See, it's all these little pieces but don't start right away, then after you're centered and after you're totally grounded, then you step over, then you pull across, let the foot out. There's no pressure on it right now. Now start to pull across, pull across, pull across and close. The other thing is that you don't want to dip down too low down here. It's right at the waist level so pull

across, shift your weight from one knee to the other knee, step across and close. Get ready, let your foot out, pull across, pull, pull and feel that taffy in your hands. Feel that waist turning, feel it turning, remember what we said with carry the ball to the side that the arms could not move unless the waist was moving them. Touch, get ready, cover, let the foot out, pull across, slowly, feel it now in the fingertips. There's taffy sticky and it has these wonderful little strands that hang on at the end. Let the foot out, pull, feel that yarn hand, step over and close. Get ready. Now, your yarn hand is going to be the left hand as it's coming down, you're feeling as strong, strong fingers are

to me, hand is turned out and close. Touch, get ready, let the foot out, pull, step over and close and breathe, you're holding your breath, touch, let the foot out, pull, relax the hand, touch, get the hand ready, let the foot out, pull. Eventually, you let the whole thing just be smooth so that there aren't a bunch of small pieces but everything fitting together. Let's go back in the other direction, let the foot out, shift your weight, turning at the waist and close, again, pull across, pull, feel it, bring it in

and close. Let's begin set number nine, pull and to the other side, you did very, very well. Normally, you'll do, you can do nine sets or you can do just three sets as you begin everything but just when I say you, as you begin everything, as you begin your taffies. So, it's now time to meet with Justin Stone, the originator of Taichicha, after which we will be back after the talk for the review of today's movement, so stay with us. We're glad that you could

join us and we're glad that you could join us, Justin. I'm happy to be here. There are people who ask, is Taichicha an exercise? I feel great benefits in my body when I do it. I feel stronger, I feel more energized, and other people say, is it a meditation? I feel very quiet, very serene, very contemplative when I'm finished doing Taichicha. What would you say? I don't think of Taichicha either as exercise or meditation. It is true that the movements exercise the internal organs, which can be very important and contain many benefits, and for this reason, I want to warn people, after you do Taichicha practice, don't drink something cold right away. But when I think of exercise, I think of perspiration and getting tired. You go out and run three miles and you come back, bathe in perspiration, and you step on a scale. You've

lost a couple of pounds, you drink some water, you eat your dinner, and you've got a couple of pounds back. But this is a description of Taichicha at all. We don't tend to perspire doing Taichicha, and while it is graded, controlling weight, it isn't done through effort, it is the effort of no effort that does it. As regards meditation, anybody watching a group practicing Taichicha, will notice the difference in the expression after half an hour or so. When people come in, they may be under a lot of pressure, perhaps they just came off a freeway, had a tough day at the office, and so forth. But as class wears on, you begin to see a different kind of look. They begin to relax, and even to yawn, and then as you get close to the end of the class, feeling good, they're rather sorry that it's all over for the day. Of course they can go home and practice if they want. So I don't think of it

as exercise or meditation, most certainly it has the benefits of both. Well, this is good to know, so that people essentially can take it individually. They can think of it, they can do it in any way that is best for them, is what you're saying. As long as they do it correctly. That's true. But that's very important. This energizing business is very interesting. I had an 89 -year -old student named Mimi, and while she was taking her course or her beginning course, she, one night, said, I'm going square dancing, and I said, Mimi, you've been exercising or moving for an hour and 15 minutes, aren't you tired? She said, tired, I do touch each other. And many people feel this energizing effect almost immediately. But it is good to remember, because of this, I would not practice

touch each other after dinner at night, do it in the morning and the later afternoon. If you practice it in the evening, you may be so energized that you don't feel like sleeping. I've had some students tell me that they couldn't figure out why they'd been so tired when they went to bed, and then later on, they were wide awake. I asked them, did you do your Thai chit -che, and they said, yes. That's the key question, did you do it? The benefits come by themselves, you don't have to practice, or you don't have to rather tell people that they're going to come. Just do the practice and see. And they usually tell their teachers about it afterwards. So while we are not really exercising, what we are doing is doing movements. Some of them are very quiet movements, and we are not really meditating in a true sense at the same time we are getting the benefits of both. But it is important to rationalize it, or rationalize

it in any way. The important thing is the practice, and that the results of the practice. And the results seem to be quite a few, and that's very encouraging for most people that something that they are going to do, even though you say we're not holding out a carrot, that people do begin to sense something wonderful is happening. We're glad that you could share this time with us and that you could share some of the experiences that happen to people when they do their chit -che practice. It's a pleasure to do it, Garmin. We've enjoyed having you with us also. Please stay with us for the review of today's movements. We're glad you could join us for the closing review. Let's begin with Pulling Taffy.

And then after that, we're going to bring one of our old movements back so that we can practice it, and that was carry the ball to the side. I thought that two movements that we use to the side might be kind of helpful for getting us, since we're in a side motion this time. One of the things that you might want to keep in mind is that as you're pulling the Taffy to the side, that the waist is releasing all that energy that you've been storing in the beginning movements and letting it come up all the way through your body so that you can keep making this wonderful orbit all day long and have the energy that you need to do the things that you would like to. So, touch the leg, the left leg, get the hand ready, cover with the other, let the foot out, pull, step over and close, touch, get ready, cover, let the foot out, slide the hands over each other, slide,

slide, the hand turns out, this hand is your young hand, strong, step over and close, and you step over to the side that you were pulling. Touch, let the foot out, pull. Now, are you beginning to notice that what seemed complicated when you first saw it, when you take it apart, really isn't all that complicated, is it? And life is kind of like that. But we get an aha, that's not as hard as I thought it was going to be. But you know if we never try something, we're never going to know that it really was very simple, that we really could do it, pull and feel it, step over and close and notice that I'm not going very fast so you can jump in anytime, here we are, pull, step over and close, get ready,

pull and close, get ready, stay at waist level, stay at waist level, watch the young hand or the fingers to me, very good, this is very, you're doing very, very well and one more time and pull and close and get ready, see you didn't even have to touch this time and pull across and close. If you do have to touch, just use it as a help. The next one is carry the ball to the side so we'll step over so we don't run into the wall, get your hands ready, get the hands ready, let the foot out to the heel and begin, here's one, come back, here's two and here's three, remember that little push through the bottom of push pull,

that little push, fingers are to the ceiling, now fingers are to the floor and now I'm pushing with this right hand, that little push through the bottom is a yes, yes I'm willing to go in that direction, notice how you felt when you said that, when you felt that little push through, is your face relaxed, are you ready to accept it, feel the yinning and yawning in your legs, here's the third one and notice that I'm torquing at the waist, that the waist is moving, just like the little vajar, get ready now, fingers are to the ceiling, let the foot out, there's one, two, three, step over, breathe and close and again and don't let yourself drop that ball, hold onto it, hold onto it all the way through, fingers

are relaxed, here's two and here's three and here's the last one, one, two, three and close and now it's time for Cosmic Consciousness Pose, right foot flat on the ground, bring the left up against it, overlap the hands with the elbows as high as the shoulders, thumbs up, look through that space between the thumbs, know that we can be clear and that sometimes to be clear means to be simple, they seem to go together, remember someone great once said be as little children, they are simple, have a great week and share the time,

have a great week, have a great week, have a great week, have a great week, have a great for a 60 -minute videocass at copy of all 19 movements and one pose of Tai Chi Cha, joy through movement with Carmen or a copy of the companion book, called 1 800 328 56 63 63.