T’ai Chi Treks

Several people have asked me to explain what T’ai Chi Treks is all about…well that means I have to give you some history. I put together everything that I love to do more than anything in the world. This meant putting my favorite “teachers” in one package–wilderness, people, T’ai Chi Chih, together with the things I like to do with others and alone. Then one day, in the middle of doing what I was looking for, I found it. It’s called T’ai Chi Treks. I invite anyone who can carry his or her own pack, wants to learn T’ai Chi, and wants to have a great time.

T’ai Chi Treks has been a six year venture that is operating now in its first year as a business. The treks are 4 to 22 day wilderness trips, with an emphasis on relaxing and simplicity, in order to learn T’ai Chi Chih and simple sitting meditation. In 1991 we will return to the Four Corners Grand Gulch, Yosemite, Anza Borega, Joshua Tree (rock climbing), Lake Tahoe, and new next year are two “River Chi” trips (rafting). T’ai Chi Treks will also be going to Thailand, Mexico and possibly Costa Rico in 1991.

Three years ago I began integrating T’ai Chi Chih practice into my outdoor courses. I had been teaching T’ai Chi Ski programs since 1984 and found that the dynamics of T’ai Chi movements can be universally applied to any sport with great results. This brings me to my move to Boulder, CO. in 1986. I joined the Colorado University Outdoor Progam staff as the T’ai Chi instructor. They put me everywhere; we found that every program could use a little T’ai Chi. (This is how I built my regular classes as well as had a great time working with athletes.) We offered T’ai Chi Rock Climbing Intensives, T’ai Chi Telemark Skiing [Pam Towne wrote me once to ask me how I was teaching T’ai Chi Telemarketing], T’ai Chi Ski, T’ai Chi Ultimate Frisbee, T’ai Chi Twister ( a balancing game played in the dirt with quarters, to learn fluid weight shifting), T’ai Chi Weightlifting and my favorite – T’ai Chi Backpacking. This is really where it all began, in an area of the Four Corners called the Grand Gulch, sacred ruins of the Anasazi Indian.

To give you a small sense of what the T’ai Chi Trek experience is like, here are some of my journal entries from various treks. There is a huge part of me that insists on finding the words to express how powerful these trips have been, and yet I also want readers to know there are no words to say what is really happening. It is easier to paint the pictures with words (and give you a feeling), than to describe the specific events that change people (and leave you with an empty analysis).

November 25, 1988. Thanksgiving day in the gulch. Grateful seems like a small word; it needs at least ten thousand more letters. I feel open. That is the best role I can assume – with no thing to teach. To try to facilitate anything out here would be to miss the whole point. But, aren’t I here to teach T’ai Chi Chih? Good question grasshopper, let’s go up into the ampitheatre and see who wants to move. So, I am open to the lessons of this day. Everything occurs so spontaneously out here. I am ready.

Sprinkled powder sugar snow dusted over crimson canyon walls and green juniper and sage. White, red, green, and blue above. It was glorious, until Kelli opened her tent door and gasped and screamed. She jumped out, jumping up and down, wearing long johns and a hat, and went running off our landing down into the riverbed below. Everyone was jarred awake now and scared from the commotion. I was the first to make it down to her (fearing all sorts of EMT scenes), where she was stooping low to the ground, hunched over her hands in the dirt and snow. “Are you ok? Kelli what’s the matter?”

“It’s the first snow I’ve ever seen in my whole life! It’s so great, so white, so beautiful! It snowed for me. God is snowing on me. I’ve got to make a snowman.” Yes, God is snowing on you. This, is the definition of glorious. [Kelli is from Hawaii, and it was a very rare occasion for it to snow in this canyon…a rare blessing indeed.]

March 27,1989. Turkey Pen Ruin- Grand Gulch
Leaving the vans, pavement, oreo cookies, and textbooks far behind us, in the pitch black of late night we walked into the belly of the Grand Gulch, trusting the innate feeling of our feet, lucid sound, and no-vision to guide us. The trek begins in the Yin. Intentionally calling upon our intrinsic feminine qualities of the dark, the cool, the contracted, the receptive, the intuitive… the canyon colours hidden in the black and grey shadows of night.

A dusting of frost hints of the still dark sky. It is 4:30 a.m. I lie back down staring at the bold line between black cliff and starry sky. I always wake up early the first morning here; in fact I don’t usually sleep, haunted by my own anticipation of seeing the faces when everyone sees where we are camped. The view is so incredible it defies the senses for about two days, until one draws a new frame of reference and allows for a great deal of no-scale scale. The canyons are familiar; I’ve been here before (and brought many people), and yet I am restless with what lies ahead.

Unzipping my warm sleeping bag coccoon jars away the dreamy fuzz in my brain, as I gulp frozen air and throw on sweats. The three gongs of the saute’ pan signal everyone to wake up, crawl out of their bags and gather together. (When we laid out the bags last night I informed everyone that the sound of a gong would wake them in just a few hours and that we would be walking a short distance in the dark to watch the first light in the Gulch.) This sleepy group, layered in clothes, so droopy and testing…this better be worth it. I see the questioning minds…didn’t we just get into bed? Is she crackers? What did I sign up on this trip for? Where’s my flashlight?

Under the beam of a flashlight we walk up a sandy slope until it levels, and then spread out so everyone has a flat spot. We sit in the roaring silence of night, just before dusk, and without any words everyone begins to listen, and breathe. (Some question…What are we supposed to be doing? Do we get to sleep tonight? Today? When is she going to tell us what to do?) As the stars disappear and the black sky softens and pales, giving way to an eery shadow of light. All heads roll straight up to see the towering ampitheatre bending far out over our heads and around to the thousands of feet of vertical canyon walls that feel like an arms reach opposite us and down into the riverbed below, defined by the meandering canopy of green junipers and sage.

There are no words for instruction, there is only feeling and embracing the breath of the canyon. “Joyous Breaths” seems to ‘begin’ us as a welcoming. In the morning, silence is tricked by one cricket song, then an entire choir, then silence. There is a moment of stillness just before the first wind, that hints of the sun’s approach rising to touch the rim of the canyon, then the sky is light, but no sun. Palms together, we bend and stretch in salute to the morning stream of sunlight gently settling on the rim of red baked rocks.

I begin to move and those who feel it follow in their first T’ai Chi Chih. The Cricket song fades into a steady soft hum, in time with the first sunlight rolling down the canyon walls like a theatre curtain, a golden bronze seam of light closing the shadowed night down into the cool sands, striking juniper trees into a vivid green. Soft glow caresses the eager faces and shoulders relax in the soothing warmth. Soon we are all moving to the ringing silence of this desert canyon. Absolute ringing silence. A swift rushs through us circling, skimming the red rocks as if only two inches away. Crows visit, black circles in a blue sky. Layers of outer clothing are discarded in heaps in the sand as the sun warms us. There is no teaching, only listening to the canyon as it moves us and grounds us in its grandeur. Embracing the Yang, we are in touch now with light, the heat, the dry, the creative and intelligent, the expansive.

In some faces, there is the realization of the intentional Yin Yang entrance into the gulch. The furtive glance, ‘Oh I get it, we left in the dark, and now we’re in the light…cool.’ In other faces is the calm look of pressures far away, and in others…time to eat. Me, I feel satisfied.

The mind attempts to take it all in, yet the view is too large to be held. It is the sand beneath my toes which calls my attention, seems to hold me together, as everything around expands. It is only in the final conscious pose that I embrace the grandeur of these screaming canyon walls, the yelping crimson and oranges, the created universe. As I begin to disappear, it is my feet that recreate my own presence. Roots.

We did T’ai Chi just as the sun was breaking over the Second Story ruins today. I’m sure that no one saw them until after we stopped moving. The attention seems to be so complete. It’s as if I can see them leaving all their thoughts back in the vans, and they don’t need them out here. Our needs are at a minimum out here and we are left just to enjoy who we really are. The sharings are honest and to give voice to our souls is all that is necessary. I have no worries with this group; they are all very caring and responsible. I am able to relax and enjoy too.

Today we released our voices in spontaneous toning harmonies in the Turkey Pen kiva. Justin said [in Heightened Awareness] that toning was healing and cleansing, but this felt like a big group mantra, all of us returning to some primal source together through sounds. It was really fun, and as always very spontaneous. Red Moon & Blackbird just started om-ing to hear the acoustics in the kiva, and it was such a wondrous sound that eventually we all ended up down in the kiva toning our hearts out…whatever sound wanted to come out. What a way to wake up.

This whole day was mine, all mine, in the silence of this grand red canyon. Everyone is out on ‘solo’ and I feel so relaxed. Every cell in my body burst today as I spied Zenith moving T’ai Chi forms high up on the cliff edge, evoking personal and impersonal chi, expressing learned and freeform movements, creating a universe all her own. I watched her private dance and felt blessed in the witnessing of another’s intention to tap into the source of All. I felt more religious in that moment than ever in my life. Then the whisper to leave her alone to her dance pulled me out of the stare onto a walk down the river bed. And I realized I’ve been trying too hard to be perfect. I just want to be simple, to listen, to move the dance that flows through me, to move in awe and react from awe and walk in awe, and to celebrate as many magical journeys into the bellies of this wild earth as is possible, and to bring those of ready spirits…ready and awake, deep into our centers. Please let this be my bliss.

Zenith told me today that she saw me from her cliff, a pink speck down at basecamp and that she was so happy to see our connection, from such a distance, but that she realized at that point that we were connected no matter where we are, by our T’ai Chi dance, by the great Tao that dances us all. And I thought I was crying yesterday. Wow.