Trying to write something coherent about posture the other day led me to realise just how different heartwork is to taichi. One could almost say that despite driving to the same end - yielding - they are in many ways opposites.
The key to heartwork is the partner work. Everything we discover: principles, energy structures, ways of being, all come out of intense, high energy, heart-to-heart interactions. The only rule we insist on is to go forwards (all or nothing). Retreat, or holding back, is not an option. Also a poetic attention to the quality of the interactions - passionate, light, soft, spirited, spontaneous, yet equally sober, heavy, aggressive, disciplined. Any analysis is always after the event and is attempted purely to aid our solo practice (which is a process of retrieving the form of these interactions and allowing them to settle more readily into a body of work).
When the interactions work well the spirit binds together all our aspects and we enter mysterious energetic realms where time really is immaterial, distance is inside out & spirit is critical in allowing us entry. Such interactions demand high reserves of energy/spirit, sobriety/dedication, generosity/cooperativeness, fearlessness/ joyfulness, and an intelliegent, committed and uncompromising attention to the knitting together of the fabric of your life & being into a single driving heartworked thrust into destiny and the unknown.
Unfortunately taichi has nothing of the sort. I remember being introduced to Rupert Sheldrake in 1986 and him asking me what I did. I replied - taichi. "But that's just something you do for half an hour in the evening isn't it. What else do you do?" It was then that I realised that JK was not teaching taichi. His art was something very different.
"The meaning of life is life" John Kells
The key to heartwork is the partner work. Everything we discover: principles, energy structures, ways of being, all come out of intense, high energy, heart-to-heart interactions. The only rule we insist on is to go forwards (all or nothing). Retreat, or holding back, is not an option. Also a poetic attention to the quality of the interactions - passionate, light, soft, spirited, spontaneous, yet equally sober, heavy, aggressive, disciplined. Any analysis is always after the event and is attempted purely to aid our solo practice (which is a process of retrieving the form of these interactions and allowing them to settle more readily into a body of work).
When the interactions work well the spirit binds together all our aspects and we enter mysterious energetic realms where time really is immaterial, distance is inside out & spirit is critical in allowing us entry. Such interactions demand high reserves of energy/spirit, sobriety/dedication, generosity/cooperativeness, fearlessness/ joyfulness, and an intelliegent, committed and uncompromising attention to the knitting together of the fabric of your life & being into a single driving heartworked thrust into destiny and the unknown.
Unfortunately taichi has nothing of the sort. I remember being introduced to Rupert Sheldrake in 1986 and him asking me what I did. I replied - taichi. "But that's just something you do for half an hour in the evening isn't it. What else do you do?" It was then that I realised that JK was not teaching taichi. His art was something very different.
"The meaning of life is life" John Kells
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