Tai Chi, Spiraling Movement & Stretching Class
6-week series in Sharon Springs

The Many Benefits of Tai Chi

For over 3,000 years Chi Kung (QiGong) exercises have been used to heal illnesses, release stress and slow the aging process. Like acupuncture, it is based on the cultivation and intentional movement of "chi" - internal life-force energy. This chi animates and empowers the physical tissue. It is the link between the mind, imagination and powerful physical expression. Chi Kung opens and unleashes the body's energy centers and channels. It is the source of healing, regeneration and power in Chinese medicine, martial arts, and Taoist meditation.

Tai Chi is an applied Chi Kung system, based on movement of this chi in specific ways and for specific purposes (meditation; health improvement, regeneration and maintenance; or martial arts and self defense).

Tai Chi tends to improve circulation by creating a smooth, rhythmic flow through the circulatory system. The continuous, circular weight shifting motions involved in performing Tai Chi seem to create a pumping effect that mobilizes and moves blood efficiently back and forth between one's extremities and one's heart.

The movements of Tai Chi, when done properly, stretch all the muscles, tendons, ligaments and fascia of the body. The joints and body cavities are gently and rhythmically opened and closed, creating a pumping action. This action aides the process of blood and lymph flow as organs, tissues and the vascular system are gently pressurized and expanded, and then relaxed and recoiled.

Performance of Tai Chi seems to induce an efficient breathing pattern that leads to high levels of oxygenation in the blood. Tai Chi is a low to moderate intensity exercise that is safe for people who might have cardiorespiratory difficulties or diseases.

The beneficial effects also include balance, coordination, relaxation, enhanced emotional and mental health, and an emotional and spiritual uplift. People who practice Tai Chi are less likely to break bones when they fall, due to the relaxed nature of their bodies.

My goal as a teacher is to help people experience their own bodies and the patterns of tension, movement and expression that are unique to them. Through this process, a person's progress in learning a movement form like Tai Chi is significantly enhanced and their experience deepened.

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Class will be a combination of the following
(depending on student interest and experience):

Wushu Basic Training

Your body is lead through a series of full body stretching and skill building exercises. The sequence flows from standing at rest and centering - to larger, more articulate spiraling movements, and coordinated, rhythmic shifting of weight from leg-to-leg. Muscles, ligaments, tendons and joints are warmed up and lengthened. Physical coordination is encouraged and developed through learning and repeating basic movement patterns, including some animal movements. Concepts explored, of Chinese internal martial arts being a trio of meditation, health and martial arts - all working together, yet being distinct ways to utilize and apply chi.

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Simplified Wu Style Tai Chi

We will first learn a playful "tai chi dance" form (learned from Al Huang while resident at Esalen), which will serve as a warm up for the Wu form. It explores movement through the unfolding of a story that playfully and sweetly connects your movements to the environment in which you are moving. Metaphors of sending your energy into the earth and heavens and moving like the branches in a tree help make the whole thing fun and easier to remember.

The simplified "short form" of the Wu style, as developed by Master Kumar Frantzis, focuses on internal alignments, body mechanics and attention to energy flow direction. Master Frantzis was given the direction, by his teacher in China, to modify and adapt the forms he had learned so that they would be most appropriate for the bodies of Western Tai Chi practitioners. The form emphasizes the opening and closing of the body's joints in coordination with the movements in the form. The result is an internal pumping that eventually engages all the fluid systems of the body (circulatory, synovial, lymph, etc.), producing a gentle internal massage for all the organs and connective systems. John-Erik was certified by Master Frantzis (lineage holder of the Chinese Wu style system) to teach the Simplified Wu form.

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Dragon Style Tai Chi

The Dragon, when rousted, accelerates from a lumbered sleep to full fury and threatening movement, in mere moments. After the flurry, Dragon can settle down again. Dragon style tai chi is tai chi mixed with elements of Chinese ba qua. The result is a movement form which has elegance, grace and variety of spiraling motions. The tempo changes from slow and rhythmic to fast and more explosive and back again as you move your body through the movement sequence of postures in the form, while entering into the mind set of Dragon energy, physicality and spirit. John-Erik learned this form from Master Bow Sim Mark of the Boston Chinese Wushu Research Institute in the 80's, when he was also on the school's performance team.

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Kitchen Tai Chi

Learn to simplify and magnify a voyage through the kitchen, paying attention to subtle elements of how and why your body moves as it does in this movement. Learn four fundamental energy movement principles ("Peng" - rising, inflating; "Ji" - issuing forward; "Liu" - drawing back; "An" - pressing down) and how they combine into intricate sequences producing regular everyday movement. From opening a drawer and removing a spoon, to approaching and closing the refrigerator door - you learn to explore the qualities and nature of subtle movement patterns engaged and expressed in these movement gestalts. From this basic body/energy /movement understanding, we develop a free-form, spontaneous "dance in the kitchen" - using kitchen objects as partners in the dance. Allow your spontaneous self to express using graceful tai chi style movements.

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Instructor Bio - John-Erik Omland

John-Erik Omland has practiced Tai Chi movement forms over 25 years, was member of Chinese Wushu Research Institute performance team and is a certified Wu Style instructor. His teachers include Master Bow Sim Mark, Boston and Master Kumar Frantzis (California).

John-Erik offers "Personal Transformation Sessions" which may combine therapeutic massage, basic Tai Chi or Chi Kung movements and postures, and NLP coaching (NeuroLinguistic Programming). Click here to learn more about his NLP practice, or Power Manifestation coaching, which he incorporates into his work with clients.

His therapeutic massage is a combination of deep tissue bodywork, Esalen massage, subtle energy balancing and myofascial unwinding techniques. He was certified at Esalen Institute in Big Sur California and the Polarity Wellness Center in Cambridge Massachusetts and has incorporated a variety of other disciplines and trainings, including "rebirthing" breathwork, sound healing and toning, Postural Integration and Bio-energetics.

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