Last Friday night we had another great Kyusho session. Month after month I can see the participants digesting and appreciating more and more of the pressure point knowledge. I’ll post videos of some of the healing “recipes” soon. But for now check out this new video to show how the proper use of pressure points and tai chi skills can give you the upper hand if ever necessary.

Saturday I met with a 6^th degree Ryusei Karate player Peter Giffen from here in town and we shared some of our thinking regarding joint locking and manipulations. This was fun for me, getting info from an external style perspective. I learned a few things and hope to spend more time with Peter.

Sunday we played push hands at the park. The focus this day was learning to touch someone’s root as quickly as possible. The training involves being able to first feel an opponents root and then we train to try to pick up that connection as quickly as possible. This training is very subtle. Anyone watching from a distance would have thought we were just standing there, linked by our arms. But in reality we were enhancing our ting jing (listening) skills to the point of knowing where our opponents root was immediately upon 1^st contact.

Last night we had a small turnout at class and so we focused on the applications required for the 1^st ranking. I mentioned to a student that we all have strengths and weakness and the applications are usually very difficult for women with no martial experience to digest. This is as it should be. All I ask is that all students get a rudimentary martial understanding of the forms, as Tai Chi is a martial art at its core. Later in our curriculum after the grosser/baser aspects have been divulged we focus on the more subtle aspects of the arts in pursuit of raising our consciousness.

Last night I also had two interesting conversations – one regarding belief vs knowing and another on the differences between a Master and a Sifu. Great stuff!

Peace

Rod