27th March - nearly done!

As our time here is drawing to a close (only 2 days to go) I’ve been considering a few things: what will I miss about being here; what have I got from being here; what will I not miss; what am I most looking forward to about being back in Brighton…

Firstly I’ll miss the people I’ve been here with. Ed for his compassion, Javier for his intensity, Dorian for her laugh and insight, Karin for her caring and clarity, Erik for his gentlemanliness (one might almost say he has the nobility of a fine horse!), Bobby for his wisdom, Tony for his questions and openness, “88 Mary” for her passion and joy for life, Trude for her listening and gentleness, Declan for his eagerness, and Sam, of course, for his jokes…

Then there’s the food; as people who’ve got to know me here will testify, I do enjoy food! And I love Mexican cuisine, with it’s warmth, freshness, juiciness… a little rich and meat heavy, but you can work around that somewhat. Our housekeeper, for all that she’s done the laundry, kept the place clean, done the shopping, hasn’t been an inspiring or inspired cook – but then we also didn’t have to do any of that for ourselves. I’m looking forward to some good British food: curry and a pint at the Unity; sushi at Moshi Moshi; tapas in the South Lanes.

The weather here has been perfect, even able to sunbathe sometimes; I’m not expecting to be able to do that for some months in England. It’s been wonderful to watch hummingbirds, butterflies (including monarchs), kiskadees, egrets, hawks… there was an incident at training this morning – a large hawk disturbed the nesting egrets from their nests above us and circled whilst herded by those huge snowy white galleons of the sky. Beautiful!

I may take some time to not be on the lookout for scorpions if walking barefoot. We have had a couple wandering the house, and a few cockroaches. The scorpions got killed before I could see them, so I’ve been out at night with a torch looking for them but no luck yet.

I’ve got many things from being here, particularly as this intensive was held in Mexico, a place which has the feeling of coming home for me.

It’s been a source of frustration to me for years that, even with all the Tai Chi out there, a cohesive and well developed curriculum has been difficult to piece together; and now I and our students don’t have to scrabble around to find it. I feel very honoured to be able to bring back what I’ve learned, add it to the fine foundation and enthusiasm for the study that we already have in Sussex and take things forward as a community of Tai Chi players. (I remember sitting around at the pub trying to find a collective noun for Tai Chi’ists and hitting upon a Tao of Tai Chi players… what do you think? Will it catch on?) The skills of Tai Chi we all work on in our training on a daily (or at least frequent and regular basis), and that’s the road we’re all on.