Fall Beginnings

Marc Heeg, Boulder, CO

After a busy summer completing my language requirement and practicing for all my concert work this year, driving to Ohio for a wedding, then jumping into high gear with work, I still managed to complete my T’ai Chi Chih teacher’s training and certification. I started a class in October and have eight diligent students. It’s a whole new experience teaching something quite different than music. It also feels very satisfying to me to have so much physical discipline myself and to share that with other people. It gives me a different kind of confidence. Already I have ten interested people for a winter class and I haven’t even done any posters or advertising yet!

From Marc’s brochure on T’ai Chi Chih:

Marc Heeg is a professional concert pianist and teacher who has played throughout the US and western Europe. He has won numerous prizes and awards for his work. Given his energetic lifestyle, Marc has sought peace of mind in less stressful activities. These include gardening, philosophy, mountain hiking, and Zen meditation. And Marc is an accredited T’ai Chi Chih teacher!

T’ai Chi Chih is a disciplined form of twenty prayerful and quiet movements derived from ancient Chinese Taoist philosophy and the self-healing art called chi gung. In performing these movements, we are circulating the flow of what the orientals call chi (vital energy). Christian nuns practicing this discipline call it “harnessing the God energy.” Oriental philosophy believes in a complete circle of life energy which is divided into two relative contrasting energies, yin (quiet, enclosing, dark, negative, internalizing power) and yang (strong, outgoing, bright, positive, externalizing power). The oriental does not see these two contrasting powers in the same dualistic good versus evil manner as the westerner. Instead, he sees it as a necessary coexistence of the two. They balance one another, merge in and out of one another, and give existential meaning to one another. The movements we practice daily help to balance and channel these energies inside us. As we become centered within ourselves, we become centered within the universe.