Tai Ji Quan Dao

“Blue skies and Mediterranean heat enhanced this year’s Residential Weekend at Audley End. But although relaxation or ‘sung’ filtered through the agenda, the mood was far from lazy.

Fifteen months on from the last workshop Sifu Herman Chan-Pensley guided us, with the assistance of his son Jonathan and David Miller, through the next stage in our journey of self-discovery. We developed and explored concepts introduced during the first weekend workshop and also took new information, experiences, and exercises home with us to work on for the coming years. The emphasis was on self-healing, sensitivity training and reaching for those sometimes elusive emotions.

Sleep this year ranged from none at all, to sleeping so deeply that even a rogue alarm clock with attitude problems could not awaken the owner at 2.30 in the morning. One advantage of sleep deprivation was a close encounter with a deer in the misty first light of dawn.

During the last session which included feedback, words such as “warmth” and “growth” were used with feeling. One particular comment stays in my mind from the “baby” of the group in terms of years of experience. He said “I didn’t realise Tai Ji was so big.” This came from someone more familiar with discovering snakes in Africa than finding his own snake-like spirit.

I think that we all felt privileged to be able to devote a weekend to intensive Tai Ji Quan training and to be part of a group of people soaking up and enjoying not only the sun, but also the particles showered on us from the depths of the art.

Herman was very successful again in his role of facilitator for metamorphic change and the shedding of crusty outlived garments we no longer need. He creates an atmosphere safe enough for us to explore ourselves and to develop trust in those around us.”

Philippa Davidson

“This was a follow-on workshop for anyone who’d been to the first one last year or its equivalent earlier this year. These provided an initial foundation and it never ceases to surprise me as to how much foundation you need when working with qi gong and tai ji quan. Learning the mechanics is one thing. Internalising the concepts so that they become second nature is another. Making them part of your everyday life is something different again.

Both weekends dealt with the self-healing aspect of qi gong and tai ji quan, something that is often quite difficult to explore in the hour-and-a-half of a weekly, mixed experience class where the emphasis is on learning the physical side of the art. The fascinating thing, is how difficult it is to recognise the need to constantly re-balance, setting yourself in the wider context. I always find that a weekend away from my everyday responsibilities, working with other like-minded people in a focussed way is, in itself, a balm. The fact that these are tai ji quan weekends is a bonus.

Disease. Dis-ease. From the acute to the chronic and all stations in between. We each seem to have our own needs. One of the benefits of such a weekend as this can be finding out that others are in the same boat, or at least in one that looks pretty similar. If you’re reading this as someone who’s not been to something like this before, don’t worry, such discoveries don’t come from endless hours of “deep” discussion, they tend to appear unnoticed during one of the excellent meals or whilst relaxing and chatting in the sun between a session of qi gong and learning some new aspect of the tai ji canon, only to show themselves to you later on.

Sifu, David and Jonathan guided us through the weekend and a good deal of emphasis was placed on dealing with one of the curses of modern, sedentary lifestyles – the bad back. Stretching, strengthening and relaxation are key elements in handling this all too common problem and it turns out that there is a veritable store-chest of both external and internal qi gong techniques available to help, some of which we learnt.

However, for me, the value of such a weekend is, in no small part, due to the company of like-minded people. At times the energy was palpable and my ability to learn, in a situation like this, seems to be raised. With such a positive atmosphere I found some moments of real relaxation and the pleasure of being there and doing something for myself was very rewarding.”

Dave Hope