Students’ Letters

TCC in Florida

I’ve had several experiences from doing T’ai Chi Chih for even the short time since the workshop. Last Thursday, I had my blood pressure checked at the doctors office. My blood pressure was DOWN 20 POINTS!!! I had a BP of 110/78 and I’ll bet it’s been 20 years since I’ve had a reading that low. The doctor asked what I’d been doing to accomplish this marked drop in BP. “T’ai Chi Chih,” I told him. It’s amazing what a conversation piece that statement is. The doctor wanted me to explain what this T’ai Chi Chih thing was and I found myself being an enthusiastic evangelist of the practice. Finding out about T’ai Chi really is good news, isn’t it? It’s amazing to me how many persons know nothing at all about it. I’m discovering that T’ai Chi Chih is a gift of great value and I intend to treat it with all due respect. I’m also discovering that the gift of T’ai Chi Chih allows me access to a feeling of immense power (Chi???) that is changing my life experience for the better. I also intend to treat this power with a great deal of respect.

The second experience I had was totally mind blowing. One day last week I started thinking about one of the moves. Push Pull I think it was. I did just the hand movement and what happened was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. It was like I had a visit from an unseen source of an immense charge of electrical power. It felt like my whole body was enveloped and caressed by a warm comfortable blanked of energy. It was an absolutely wonderful experience. My whole body tingled like a light but extremely powerful electric shock. To me, the whole experience was an extremely impressive demonstration of the effect of the practice of T’ai Chi Chih.

Sincerely,

– David Belz
Ft. Myers, Florida

(Letter to Jean Katus from David who had taken a workshop with Jean in Naples, Florida.)

* * *

The other day, a colleague of mine and I were engaged in a rather intense discussion about the ideas of a famous philosopher.

“What could be better than this?” she asked.

“Well,” I replied, “I could be doing T’ai Chi Chih in a Japanese garden in Kyoto with Vanessa Redgrave.”

Last Thursday, I found myself doing T’ai Chi Chih in a pleasant inner garden at the Newman Center in Fargo, ND, with Chris Curran.

How much more extraordinary is the ordinary than the extraordinary.

– Dave Arenz
Student of Chris Curran
5/21/88