The Lighter Side (February 2025)

Reprinted from April 2003

One night I gave a T’ai Chi Chih (TCC) presentation after I finished teaching karate. Earlier that day I practiced the presentation many times in front of a mirror, and I could really start to feel the buildup of Chi.

Knowing that part of a presentation is to talk about my own personal experience, I asked one of my students, Eric, to stick around after karate class to help me out. First, I wanted to show the group how 20 years of fast, hard karate moves had taken a toll on my body, how I had cooked up a recipe for chronic pain. And second, how the soft, slow, TCC form, for me, was the antidote for this pain.

When I demonstrated the karate technique on Eric, I was surprised at my explosive speed. I didn’t strike any harder, but I did move faster. And I realized it was because I was much more relaxed due to the buildup of Chi.

After the presentation, Eric asked me, “Sensei [teacher], does your foot hurt?” “No,” I said, “why?” “Well,” he said grinning sheepishly,” because you just split my groin cup into three pieces!” (That was the first and only time that has ever happened in all my years of teaching karate.) By the way, he was okay.

In a beginning class I was teaching Pulling in the Energy and instructing that we visualize a distant star. One of my students said she thought I was speaking of someone like George Clooney! — Lanni Lantery