Forest Grove Tai Chi

It's going to be sad when the weather gets too cold to practice outside, but until that day, I'll just dump layer on later on top of me! Practicing tai chi outside is the absolute best! #taichi #martialartslife #practicemakesperfect

While I was doing push hands with my sifu, my dad and I were debating over the situation in Hong Kong. For background, my dad is somehow an ultra Chinese nationalist, despite not actually being a citizen or even a passport holder. I am merely on the side of citizens of HK who are at present caught up in a dangerous situation. I know my dad very well and all the tactics he employs during debates, so safe to say I dismantled everything he threw at me. With no ground left to go ...to, he pulled this: "You're just an incredibly stubborn person. Look at you, look how worked up you are. You should see yourself. You have a real problem." I laughed a genuine, joyful bellow. Because all that time my sifu was trying to push me over and couldn't because I was so grounded. Opening my heart, I applied the softest pressure to my sifu's shoulder and pushed him over. My sifu gave me a thumbs up and I sat down, drank some tea and smiled. My dad spent most of the night uncomfortably quiet. Waves on the surface of the water sometimes don't tell you much about the currents underneath. This was the lesson.

My teacher has often said to try to move so soft that you don't disturb the air around you. Quite the compliment if this little guy was comfortable enough to chill out on my palm during my entire set tonight! #taichi #softness #chillingout #training #stillness

Training: when you practice everyday like a regular athlete, what you are doing is packing on energy like a body builder packs on muscle. More than that, you are training your physical body and mind to be more receptive to letting go, so that when you move, you have the discipline to move with and as energy and energy alone.

Class hours have now been updated! Active classes have now moved to 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM Fridays. There is also availability at the following times upon request: 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM Wednesdays 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM Wednesdays and Fridays... 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM Thursdays Please contact directly for details and locations!

The concept of Sum Yi Tai Chi is maddeningly simple: do what you want. Sum Yi is basically a fancy way of saying "intention". But how you free up everything you ever learned about movement in order to be solely powered by intention, well, that's the tricky part.

Qi. The term and concept is now so widespread as to be fairly common knowledge and understood to be fundamental when talking about tai chi and related arts. But what is it? "Life force" is actually fairly reductive when trying to understand its role in the metaphysics of tai chi. In Sum Yi Tai Chi, we use the term "Yi Hay" in place of the broader term "Qi". In this application, "Yi Hay" is the medium through which our intent, or "Sum Yi", travels. Think of it this way: sound ...requires air to travel. Sound is the manipulation of air. Sound uses air as its medium. Air is essential to the production of sound, but just by itself, air is essentially "useless". In this way, we can say Qi is essential for tai chi and the generation of martial power, but just having Qi is not enough. We have to train the manipulation of Qi to generate power and movement using "Sum Yi". See more

In tai chi, we learn to understand the connectedness of the energy in our body; we understand that when we "throw a punch", we are actually employing all of the energy in all parts of our body to work in concert to generate that single movement. We also learn that we can connect our energy with that of another, and that interaction with another body is not a matter of overpowering that body through strength, but by connecting that other system of energy and making it our own so that we may manipulate it as if it were ours to do so.

Why does one practice tai chi? The answer varies, but the one I just recently gave is this: Through tai chi, we discover a different level of reality, beyond the physical, one where the physical definitions and rules which we have grown so accustomed to limiting what we think we can do no longer have any meaning whatsoever. Tai chi gives us hope that there is more to this life, and that we can mean more than what the world has defined us. We don't have to be weak because we are small or old. We can surpass these associations, transcend them.

Outwardly, the hands and arms appear to be doing the most moving. But in tai chi, the interesting stuff is happening inside, in the very core of your body. Not in a physical way, but in a metaphysical one, motion through the body to the very ends of your fingers is generated like a whip, with the control at the handle and the power at the tip.

If someone pushes you, you pull. If someone pulls, you push. If someone presents overwhelming strength and ferocity, empty yourself and become nothing.