Last week there was a young woman dancing wildly in the park. My group was doing taiji. While we were doing our slow, controlled dance, she was working an energetic groove about fifty meters away. She was evidently making a video for TikTok or the like. I kept thinking what a good, active way this was of using one’s phone. We often think of young people passively consuming content on their screens, but of course somebody is making that content. It took her a long time to get something she was satisfied with. She had the phone on a kind of selfie stick stuck into the grass while she worked on her dance. Each take was about 20 seconds, then she’d have a look and start over. She did a lot of takes and was still at it when I left the park.
I’m glad to see people making films, recording music, creating content to share. You can learn so much! I’m assuming we all now turn to YouTube or a similar source for pointers on how to clear the drains, optimize the iPad, the care and feeding of tropical fish. And so much more.
I’ve started doing a little content creation myself, after having mostly just consumed other people’s work.
From what I like to watch, my algorithm has me pegged for short films about taiji and qigong. My rabbit hole is also home to lot of so called ‘Taoist’ exercises: Chinese calisthenics. There is an emphasis on not only moving all the joints and muscles, but also stimulating the 12 organ meridians of Chinese Traditional Medicine (TCM). I’ve been collecting these exercises for a while, for my own warmups every morning and to use in the warm-up phase of my taiji lessons. I put them in my little notebook and now have quite a lot of them.
I love all these exercises. I get a lot from this site: Warrior Tai Chi. This happy monk guy demonstrates, or sometimes it’s a young woman. They’ll tell you what the exercise is good for. In some cases it’s for flexibility and strength, other times there is a specific organ or meridian which benefits.
Some exercises have picturesque names, like ‘geese flying westwards’ and ‘swallow flies low over the cornfield’. If there’s a heron or white crane in the name, you can be sure you’ll be standing on one leg. The snake represents the spinal column: think of a snake’s skeleton. The dragon can have several meanings in Chinese culture. It stands for prosperity and power – particularly imperial power. But in the context of qigong and other exercise it’s often just a big snake with wings.
Down in my rabbit hole I’ve also been getting a lot of one very impressive Chinese martial arts specialist. This is Yuánzhī, a taiji practitioner based in Jinan, in China’s eastern Shandong province. One of my Chinese taiji buddies says it looks like she’s grown up in the world of taiji competitions. Her extreme flexibility and balance are way beyond what you need just to do taiji well.
Part of what she offers are these very same Chinese calisthenics. In many other films she demonstrates short sections of Chen style taiji. She is great at taiji, and it looks like she has an unlimited wardrobe budget: in each video she has a different, often gorgeous costume – sometimes traditional, sometimes casual. Comfy looking jeans and a loose, billowy shirt, in another an amazing Chinese brocade taiji suit. There are several new videos each day – it looks like this is her main activity. There was one today of her in a folksy restaurant ordering and eating mutton soup. She puts in only a little hot chili oil, “because I have pimples”, she says. I’ll bet she’s earning something from all this content. Even though taiji is pretty niche, I would have thought. Yuánzhī also offers complete online courses for both Yang and Chen style taiji.
For nearly four years now, I’ve been getting online taiji lessons from Damo Mitchell. I ran across some of his talks in my rabbit hole and was intrigued. He knows a lot and shares it with his special brand of self-deprecating humor. I get a new video each week, and can look back at all the films from the past years as well. Often the lesson will be a series of exercises. Sometimes he’ll teach an entire form over the course of several lessons.
He also teaches meditation and neigong (inner development), and is a TCM practitioner. He’s the whole deal, and I enjoy his light-hearted approach.
His course is well structured, even for people starting from scratch. He’s worked out the order in which to build the necessary skills. When I embarked on his online course, I assumed I would someday want to spend some time at his school in Bali. But I came to the conclusion that I don’t have to meet him and work with him in person. I feel I’m getting what I need from the online course. On the other hand, I’ve never been to Bali…
Seeing all this content gives me ideas of what to make myself. I have a YouTube channel with taiji forms, including one for the short stick and one for taiji saber. It all started with some simple cooking videos I made for my late stepdad. He felt he could use some help with learning to cook for himself. He was very enthusiastic about the easy dishes I showed him. He would thank me effusively and give technical feedback. “Oh, the sound is really clear, and I can see your hands the whole time.” I’d ask if he’d tried making the dish. He never had.
I’m not planning on offering an online course. One of my videos that my students refer to a lot is of our shortest hand form, the ‘nano’, filmed from an angle behind me, and standing in front of a mirror, so the hands are visible. If you’ve been to the class, it can be helpful to practice with the video at home.
In September I gave some workshops on ‘Taiji for Singers’ in Ghent for members of the Flemish Opera Chorus. For them I made up something very short and easy: just one stance, two arm movement patterns, and a few steps forward and back. As support for this, and to help them practice at home, I made a video of that form. I also made a video of the ‘Taoist’ exercises we used for warming up in Ghent. All of which I had gleaned from the videos I keep getting more and more of. And now I’m contributing to that very stream.
Seeing that young woman making a dance video reminded me to keep my own cache of films up to date, and to continue improving the quality.
People who aspire to becoming influencers put up new content at least once a day. I don’t see that as being my aim. But as the daily taiji class continues – we’ve been at it for five and a half years by now – there’s more and more that I want to share. Online as well as live.
https://www.youtube.com/@mitchellsandler
