Tai-Chi books, section I and Tom 8/18/04

When I was in Japan, I made a conscious effort in looking for Tai-Chi and yoga books. Yoga will be another entry, but reading Tai-Chi books has been enlightening. Although the bookstore I bought from was fairly small (Mom's hometown of Yasu), I think I picked pretty good books. One is about 太極拳 and the other is about 気功. From what I know from Bill's book, they are Tai-Chi Chuan and QiGong respectively. 太極拳 book happens to be written by a 揚 (I suppose this is Yang.) who spent most his adult life in Japan. After so many weeks of classes with Tom, I am only able to recognize Yang family Long Form, but I seem to have been right. Today, we went through section I in class and I kind of felt glad to with intuition know what the next move would be. Of course, imitating, following and recognizing is very different from actually knowing, but week of lesson got me somewhere. I haven't really closely looked at the book and I don't feel qualified to comment in details, but most of the book and Tom's Long form are consistent. The only thing I noticed is the greetings or bow at the beginning and end of class. Tom has this hand-fist combination (he says it is a sign of respect in marshal arts) and a simple bow whereas the book shows deep forward bend. Now that I have this book, Bill's book and his DVD and that should be enough to keep me going practicing by myself.

One more thing I noticed today while I was signing in for class is one of his brochure had his last name: Kao. I don't think I will bring this up to him because I already told me that he doesn't read Chinese, but QiJournal had an online dictionary and it made most sense to me if it is 考. I will look more into 気功 in English and Japanese and put another entry about that later.