Tai Chi and Ba Gua as Moving Meditation [June 19-23, 2010]
While Tai Chi and Ba Gua are known as physical practices that balance the body, increase vitality, and can be used as martial arts, their practice as Taoist meditation arts is rarely taught.
Thus Brookline Tai Chi is excited and honored to host Taoist lineage holder Bruce Frantzis for five days of moving meditation instruction. In these five days, Frantzis will teach you ways of practicing tai chi and bagua that you can use whether you wish to reduce stress, find greater peace of mind, or gain spiritual clarity/stillness.
Frantzis was fortunate during his 15 years of full-time study in the East to learn two different traditions of Taoist moving meditation. He studied the “fire method” tradition in Hong Kong and Taiwan with several teachers, and the “water method” tradition in Beijing with bagua and tai chi grandmaster and Taoist Sage Liu Hung Chieh.
The fire and water meditation traditions follow a similar trajectory of study and practice. First, you learn to become aware of how and where the energies of your body, mind, and spirit are blocked, clouded, or otherwise in disarray. Then you apply methods to clear those blocks. The methods of the fire school help you “burn” through obstacles to clarity, while those of the water method, enable you to “dissolve” what is unclear within you.
As with everything Taoist, these two phases of study are not a linear progression, but a circle of practice. The more that you can become aware, the more you can clear. The more that you can clear, the more that you can become aware.
Since it has been many years since Frantzis last taught moving meditation in Brookline, his main emphasis in his instruction this year will be on the phase that traditionally is taught first to people – learning to become aware of what is inside you. If you are new to these practices, you will gain a firm foundation in Taoist moving meditation. If you are an experienced Taoist meditator, you will have the opportunity to go another level deeper into your awareness of who you are and what within you is blocked.
The movement practices of tai chi and bagua are particularly good vessels for helping you become aware of what is inside of you. Their movements are designed to awaken and circulate the energies within you – of body, mind, and spirit. During the five days of teaching, Frantzis will explore whatever bagua and tai chi awareness topics he thinks will be most helpful to the participants, drawing primarily from the water tradition but also from the fire tradition when appropriate. He will focus on seven key topics which bagua and tai chi as meditation particularly address:
- How to use tai chi and bagua forms to relax, strengthen, and smooth your nervous system and help you become aware of your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual states
- How to develop a relaxed, steady, and stable mind that can be present to, clear about, accepting of, and comfortable with these states
- How to gain a sense of internal cohesion, whole body (and eventually whole mind) awareness, and a strong sense of your mind being centered in your body, especially your lower dantian
- How to let go of your impulses to: worry or feel guilty; judge yourself; want to “fix” whatever you find within yourself; or otherwise make something happen
- How to enable your mind to be steady, nimble, and agile in times of challenge and change
- How developing your capacities to be aware and to relax can naturally lead to greater balance and health at all levels of your being
- How being aware of, relaxed with, responsive to, and accepting of your internal states is a prerequisite to learning practices such as inner dissolving
For the most part, Frantzis will teach everyone in attendance as one group. There may be times, however, when he divides the group into two, those with less experience with Taoist moving meditation and those with more experience.
Prerequisite: None. It is best if you know a bagua or tai chi form – or part of one – well enough that you do not have to think about how to do its movements. However, if you do not know such a form, then one of Frantzis’ senior instructors will teach you the first move or moves of the Wu Style Tai Chi Short Form as your practice vessel.