My Journey

As someone who struggled with their weight during my youth, I have had a relationship with back pain for as long as I can remember. This would continue even as I stumbled into a love of resistance training, often falling into the trap of trying to lift too much, and not focusing on my form. Having to take days and weeks off for reoccurring injury was frustrating and perplexing. Enter Scott Cole.

Some lovely person in my life (I cannot recall who specifically) gifted me a strange dvd titled “Scott Cole: Discover Tai Chi for Back Care”. I begrudgingly accepted at first thinking “Thanks, but I don’t need this slow, weak stuff”. So it sat on my shelf for months before curiosity got the better of me. I have to admit that the first viewing was a bit of a struggle to complete. It was not physically over-demanding, I just did not have the mental awareness or mindful presence to focus for any real length of time. I would love to say that I immediately feel in love with the movements and never looked back, but that is not what happened.

Looking back, what that first attempt succeeded in was planting a small seed, that just seed took its time sprouting.

Years would pass before I happened upon a YouTube video about “Tai Chi Qigong Shibashi” and for whatever reason I was ready to dive in. It took some effort to learn that the “Shibashi” are 6 different forms of 18 movements created by Professor Lin Housheng beginning in 1979. He has an impressive history working on and inventing scientific ways to study and work with the living energy known as ‘Qi’.

After months of practicing and internalizing as much of the Shibashi material as possible, I was ready for more. Feeling significantly more aware and alive, sensing something was still missing. I found myself at intensive workshops with Dr. Roger Janke’s Institute of Integral Qigong/Tai Chi, Grandmaster Yang Yang’s Center for Tai Chi/Qigong Studies and receiving certificates in Tai Chi from both Harvard and the Centre of Excellence. I had already begun teaching during this time, but despite the growing list of accolades I knew I needed to go deeper.

Tai Chi in its authentic form is a martial art and I did not feel like a martial artist in my own training. This had to change.

Through my continued journey I was able to experience training sessions with Huang Ping, Kathy Brenner and Shirley Ha (Tai Chi United) which were all important interactions.