My work focuses on Embodied Learning: using the body to understand how to live life and not just survive it.
- Embodied learning is a path of healing using the body to heal the mind and heart.
- Embodied learning is a path of transformation from dis-ease to wholeness.
- Embodied learning integrates deep yet simple Spiritual and Life truths into living in the modern world by bringing them to life in the body first.
Embodied learning is the path of work that I have developed which is now available through Tai Chi Movements for Wellbeing – TMW classes and TMW Training – and Metatronic Healing courses, meetings and personal healing sessions.
How it came into being – In 1974 I was in a basement Tai Chi studio in London with a group of Tai Chi brothers and sisters working with our teacher late into the night. We would come every evening during the week, and at the weekends we would be there every afternoon and sometimes late into the evening. We were seriously dedicated. On this particular night, as we were leaving, one of us said, “You know, I see the energy we are creating here like a dragon rising out of the ground.”
RDTC – as the years unfolded many of us went on to create our own schools. For me it was 1979 and I was looking for a name that represented a spiritual energy that arose in us as a result of the practice of Tai Chi. It was in that moment that the image of the Rising Dragon came to mind. At the time I was living in a Tibetan Buddhist centre in Wales, called Lam Rim. I wanted a name that students could gather under, without it representing someone in particular. I called my school “Rising Dragon Tai Chi”. We can all become rising dragons, we can all touch this awakening energy. And so RDTC was born.
The Path of the Principles – arose from my passion to find what really makes a difference, and as an organic process, it continues to evolve. Is there something I can do that will really transform and heal me? What I observed in my search is that there were some teachers of spiritual traditions, my first Tai Chi teacher for example, who seemed not to be touched by what they taught. How can this be? What is the point in devoting my whole life to being good at something if it doesn’t really touch me?
And so the quest began. To find the light, the life that illumines the practice. To use the practice to find the heart of it and then live that. This is what RDTC is about. The first part of the journey was to illumine the path of Tai Chi, so that it becomes the servant to living life not just surviving it, so that it becomes the chalice which reveals true nature and then allows us to live it.
What I discovered was what I call “The Four Essential Principles of living Tai Chi”, the first of which was revealed to me by my principal Tai Chi Teacher, Dr. Chi Chiang Tao:
- be present in your body
- be relaxed especially in the mind
- be hearted or connected to what you are engaging with
- act naturally with and from these three qualities
Soul Moves – having found the Four Principles in Tai Chi Chuan, the next step was to find a way of offering them to others who do not want to spend years perfecting the art of Tai Chi Chuan, and so “Soul Moves” was born: a movement that brings us closer to our true nature, using the Four Principles.
We explore this through The Four Strands:
- Movement – to know it in the body, formless and formal exercise and movements
- Stillness – experiencing it with meditation to know we are naturally still
- Enquiry – to know it in the mind, learning to speak and know our truth
- Healing – to help free us so that we may become truly ourselves.
TMW – if we take the general population, only about .001% is really interested in Tai Chi Chuan and that would be being generous! Maybe more would be interested in Soul Moves, but again the percentage is really small, perhaps potentially 1%. I wanted to find a way that would invite as many people as possible to experience the benefits of Tai Chi movement and the Four Essential Principles of Tai Chi. I put together a fundamentally simple sequence of moves and gestures which have the potential to bring the physical, mental and energetic benefits of Tai Chi and to mirror their clear essence to the practitioner, so that eventually they might live this. I created Tai Chi Movements for Wellbeing – TMW. TMW can be done by all ages, from the very young to the extremely elderly. It can be done by the able bodied as well as the disabled. It can be done sitting or standing. It can be done by anyone.
TMW Training – I also developed a way of teaching others to teach it. When I was training Tai Chi students to be RDTC Teachers, the process would take at least 5 years if not more, depending on the student. This obviously wouldn’t work for TMW. However because TMW is so simple and essential, I found that the foundation level for leading others could be learned in just eight days and so TMW Training was born.
Metatronic Healing® – as part of my development of the healing strand I came across Metatronic Healing, founded by Pippa Merivale in 2007. Its purpose is to empower you through its course structure to feel and live from your Truest Self.
Meeting with Pippa and joining Clare Glennon as one of two Metatronic Teachers was the culmination of a number of pathways that I explore elsewhere on this site, not least the understanding of how we are controlled by our unconscious. With this understanding, there is only so much that one can do consciously. So we need to find another way to access the unconscious conditioning that we all have. When this is freed, we can then bring the Four Principles in to release the habits that have built up over a lifetime. These are what I call the two wings of healing and awakening: Healing through the seven courses in the Metatronic Pathway and through personal healing sessions, and Awakening through the Principles.
My work supports and invites those that choose to be touched by it, to live their life rather than just survive it. It encourages participants to explore what happens if they release the habits of history and reactivity and instead allow something which reflects who they really are, to come to realise that we are already that which we seek. The dynamic is one of allowing this to emerge through Presence, Relaxation and Connection using movement, stillness, enquiry and healing.