Qigong workshop survey
and some background on what qigong is
Hello friends,
Today I’m looking for feedback on a workshop idea. But first, the usual schedule reminders & updates:
There are 3 weeks left in the current taiji session, and then I’ll be taking a little over a month off.
Next Thursday, May 29th, I’ll be shifting the evening class 15 minutes earlier so I can get to a concert afterwards. So that day only, it’ll run 5:30-6:30pm.
There will be some Tuesday morning taiji classes in July & August, but Thursday evenings will take the summer off. I’ll restart the Thursdays in September.
The new thing I’m planning is a 2-3 hour workshop on the Five Animal Frolics qigong set (more on what that actually is below). I’ve been teaching it very informally in short segments at my office, and want to do something more thorough than those little “movement snacks” allow. 2 hours of practice is enough to give complete beginners a solid introduction to all 5 animals, and start giving a bit more depth for those who have encountered them before.
What I have in mind is to do a weekend afternoon or weekday evening session, scheduled to allow for 2 hours of practice with at least one break. This would be in August or September, in a park, with a rain site booked at my office downtown. I’ll set up advance registration with a sliding scale fee so the cost shouldn’t be a barrier to anyone.
If you think you might be interested in this, please email me and let me know your scheduling preferences:
Weekday evening vs weekend afternoon
Any days of the week that you prefer or that don’t work for you
Any dates or sets of dates when you know you wouldn’t be able to come
And if you know anyone else who might be interested, please forward this to them! Of course I can’t guarantee that I can make the scheduling work for everyone, but I will do my best.
I am often asked what qigong or taiji is, or the most difficult question: what’s the difference between qigong and taiji?
“Qìgōng” (氣功) literally means “energy work”. It describes a wide variety of exercises all of which are rooted in traditional Chinese medicine, and use movement and breath to support good health.
If you’ve practiced taiji, you might have noticed that it also fits that description. I think it’s valid to consider taiji a specialised type of qigong. But for my purposes it’s helpful to distinguish between taiji and the other sorts of qigong that I do. So here are some very loose distinctions:
The “quán” (拳) in taijiquan means “fist”, “punch”, or “boxing”, and denotes that the movements all have martial applications; many other qigong sets don’t.
The “jí” (極) in taijiquan often gets confused with “qì” (氣) but it’s a different word; “tàijí” (太極) is a specific philosophical idea about how yin and yang work together.
All the qigong sets I know have a comparatively short list of movements, each of which is repeated, usually 3-8 times. Taiji forms tend to be longer lists of movements, with many of them not repeated.
All the qigong sets I know are either practiced standing in one spot or fairly casually walking in one direction; taiji forms have very specific stepping patterns and ways of moving around.
Qigong sets tend to be much more explicit about imagery and poetic names as ways to describe how doing the movements should feel.
That last point is a good lead in to what the Five Animal Frolics are. They are a very old qigong set, based on the bear, tiger, crane, deer, and monkey. Each animal has a pair of movements associated with it, along with an element, a season, and emotion. Each movement is a kind of stretching exercise, done with the mental images of how the animal moves and the personality it has in Chinese folk tales.
In short workday sessions I mainly focus on the stretching aspect of the movements, because they are a very good break for hours of sitting at a desk. The workshop I’m planning will be a chance to go a little deeper into the imagery and the feeling of each animal.
Thank you for reading this far! For dessert, here is a poem I enjoyed about Spring