A SHORT YEAR REVIEW: TRYING TO STAY OPTIMISTIC

Most of us were confronted this year with challenges that have disrupted our lives in ways we never imagined. Such changes look set to leave scars that will be around for a considerable time.

Professionally, the internal arts have tried to adapt, as every teacher scrambled to go online, and the world discovered something we knew before all this, that you can learn some useful things from home, and that technology was at last coming of age.

Now as we conclude the year, isolated both geographically and socially, and with the threat of Brexit and new virus strains upon us (in the UK at least) there appears little, on the surface, to look forward to. But I want to try and be optimistic.

PLEASE DON’T LET IT END THE WAY IT BEGUN

It appears that there are viruses everywhere at the moment. Even in my website today, for no accountable reason, the SSL certificate (that informs browsers that the site is not fraudulent) has mysteriously broken and the web company that provides the certificate cannot see where the error lies. It's a bug. The web site is unchanged, but some code has gone astray. This may be resolved by the time you receive this, or may hang around for months. (Sigh). Whatever, rest assured the site is as safe as always, but sometimes, out of the blue, things come along to disrupt life. As I say, I’m trying to be optimistic. At lease the Gumroad Tai Chi Library remains solid.

SEASONAL GIFT: LOCKDOWN TAI CHI 5 DAY SESSIONS

Which is a shame as I had just posted to my site links to the re-bundled free 5 Day Tai Chi mini-Course first recorded live earlier in the year. I’ve edited it and created a series out of the sessions and assembled all the info on the site.

You can still visit this page - just ignore the silly site security warning (if it is still there).

http://www.teapotmonk.com/articles/5-free-lockdown-video-classes-on-the-basics-of-tai-chi

Or alternatively, you can navigate your own way through the series on Youtube with this link

Either way, that’s my small gift to you at this time of the year. I hope you find them useful and fun to practice during this additional period of lockdown.

WHAT ABOUT NEXT YEAR?

I’m still trying to be optimistic.

I’ve learnt a lot of about planning courses since I began to write up the Complete Tai Chi Course a few years back. I’m exploring how to use technology better, to give more angles on how we learn, so will be launching a 37 Step Short Form Course next year - one of the most popular short Forms in the World and one that sparked other Tai Chi styles to follow suit. As there are many practitioners across the globe teaching variants of this (Cheng Man Ching/William C C Chen and Dr Chi), I’ll be exploring Cheng Mans original form and all subsequent off-shoots. If you have ever wanted to learn this exceptional Short Form (or been intrigued by one of the varieties) - then you’ll love this course. It should be out around Spring 2021. Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll send you a link to find out more. I’ll be reaching out to enthusiasts early on and keeping you updated, so let me know.

They’ll also be the long awaited sword book to accompany the popular course as well as another book on, lets say, a different subject altogether.

And finally, I’m exploring the live interview format experiment carried out this month, and looking to see how these interviews could be useful to you. (Did you catch the live Session?

FEEDBACK

So what do you think? Am I being unreasonably optimistic?

How has the pandemic not affected your training this year?
Are you coping fine at home or are you adopting new methods to get by?
What, for you, has been the most difficult aspect in keeping your practise going this year?
What remains your biggest obstacle?
Is there something I could help with?
Who would you like to see interviewed live?

Scribble back a reply to me at teapotmonk@gmail.com and let me know your thoughts on 2020 and 2021.

In the meantime,

Stay safe and happy holidays

Paul (teapotmonk)

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