Crane workshop: November 12th
Hello friends,
I’m pleased to announce the next workshop in the Five Animal Frolics series: Crane, on Wednesday November 12th.
More on that below, after the usual schedule reminders:
The current taiji session ends on October 24th, and I’ll take the last week of October off. The next session will be just four classes: the first two weeks of November, and then the first two weeks of December. See my website for full details and registration links.
The short qigong classes at theDock continue at 3pm on Mondays, skipping this coming Monday, October 13th, because of the public holiday. Full details on my website, and I keep the schedule there up to date.
The crane is the animal associated with autumn, and with sadness or grief. I think the connection between animal, season, and emotion is grounded in migration, and that’s been on my mind as I see more geese flying overhead in their Vs. So one aspect of this animal is as a reminder that many things are cyclical. The cranes fly away, and we know they’re coming back. The days get shorter, and we know they’ll get longer again.
There’s also something deeper about having sets of movements embodying negative emotions: not only sadness, but we had the bear embodying worry, and as the seasons go on we’ll work through fear and anger. White culture* tends to treat all the unpleasant feelings as simply bad things to be rejected or suppressed. Classical Chinese culture takes a different approach, which the Five Animal Frolics are an example of: there’s more space for feeling the feelings, and active support for letting them move through our bodies. I find this a much healthier approach.
At the same time, it’s not about wallowing in the bad feelings. One of the repeated themes through the whole Five Animal Frolics is feeling a thing and then letting it go. This works on at least three levels: mechanically with tensing muscles to let them relax more afterwards, energetically with the movement of qi, and emotionally.
On a personal note, the crane movements are one of the practices that got me through the incredibly weird and challenging summer of 2020. One of the few bright spots was that once we understood that it was at least possible to meet outdoors safely, I started meeting Sifu Viola in a park for (masked, distanced) private lessons. We spent a lot of time on this qigong series because it was one of the things I wanted to solidify so I’d be able to maintain solo practice after moving away. Each flap of the crane’s wings felt like a little space to feel the sadness of the moment, and to move on through it.
I hope we never have to go through another year like 2020, but this year is turning up no shortage of things to grieve too. Sadness is always a part of life, and there’s always a need for practices that help us feel it without staying stuck in it. I look forward to sharing this one with you.
* What I mean by “white culture” here is the generic majority culture of Euro-descended people in the US and Canada. Plenty of European cultures have their own ways to make room for sadness (“hiraeth”, “saudade”, and “тоска” / toska are famous examples), but this all seemed to get lost in the blending and flattening into whiteness.