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Peter A. Gilligan
WHAT IS 'TAI CHI'? London & Philadelphia. 2009. Singing Dragon. Paperback. 224 pp. ISBN: 978-1-84819-024-5 reviewed by Patrick Killough {work in progress 12/4/9} I. biblio $23.24 Title of this Review: Cutting Through Tai Chi's Underbrush. Reviewer's rating: * * * * * Beyond his three decades of hands-on experience in tai chi and other Chinese martial arts, Belfast, Ireland teacher Peter A. Gilligan also brings a powerful ability to write lucid, comparison-rich English. This skill in English writing is not a given when you pick up a book on Chinese health, exercise, "play" and martial arts. I have seen books of similar length on the same subject toss in four times as many concepts and more gibberish than any man ought to have to process. Peter Gilligan's WHAT IS 'TAI CHI' is big-picture. He moves from the generic through the specific to the individual players. And he defines the inevitable Chinese expressions, at each stage of presentation, in Western terms, comparing, for instance, diaphragm movement to a piston. Do not read this book if you have never tried at the very least an hour or more of tai chi exercises as practiced in any major "school." Any more than you would pick up a book on bowling if you had never seen anyone bowl. First, the author embeds tai chi "play" in universal 4,000 year old Chinese cultivation of general health through exercise. Gilligan also points out three irreducible elements of Chinese analysis of cosmos, society and humans: yin, yang and chi. He gives his own comparisons to western analysis, very clear and convincing. But as a good tai chi teacher should, Gilligan mainly inspired me to find my own parallels between East and West that may or may not meet a la Kipling. You can think of the the three Chinese elements of yang, yin and chi as resembling the analytical "firstness, secondness and thirdness" of pragmatism's American founder, Prof. Charles S. Peirce. Or perhaps yang is Fichte's A is A, yin is Schelling's A is not-A. And chi is then Hegel's A is both A and not-A. There you have it from China, long, long ago: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. The dialectic, the perpetual surging and yielding. Heraclitus's much later PANTA RHEI: "everything is in motion." Or maybe not. You be the judge. This is a great book that starts brilliantly and only gets better and better. -OOO- http://www.biblio.com/books/274574174.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- II. bn Title of this review: Wisdom of Ancient China: "There are no bad students, only bad teachers." Peter A. Gilligan has produced a book that speaks for itself: WHAT IS 'TAI CHI'? The more you have watched tai chi ch'uan (taijiquan), "played" at it, received instruction from a master or otherwise struggled with its form in daily practice, the readier you are for Gilligan's masterly meditation. You will want to read it again and again. The Chinese have a tradition of public exercising for health far older than the renowned Fifth Century B. C. gymnasia of Periclean Athens. "...
four and a half thousand years ago ... the incumbent emperor ordered
the people to engage in 'daily dances and exercise to improve the
health and strength of the nation'" ("What to Expect From This
Book").
Gilligan argues that there are a handful of axiomatic insights underlying and unifying Chinese culture: more basic than but taken for granted by Taoism (Daoism) and by Confucianism. These elements make up "Chinese General Systems Theory," ... "the world as energy in movement. ... a seething sea of oneness, indivisible and whole. ... This energy is the cosmic Qi (Chi). ..energy in complex ebbs, flows and interactions. ... in this sea of Qi ... The peaks are Yang and the troughs are Yin. Yin and Yang together are sufficient to analyse all this complexity. ... This is analogous to the Fourier analysis of complex wave-forms into the sum of simple sine waves." (Ch. 1 To me the remaining scores of pages, photographs, drawings and tables are no more than commentary on the passages quoted above as applied to the health through exercise of those four-limbed, bipedal animals called human beings. Yin, Yang, Qi, taken together, analyse traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and "Therapeutic exercises from TCM, generically Qi Gong" (Chi Kung) (Ch. 1). Tai Chi and Chi Kung may or may not be "martial." They are certainly forms of self-defense. "Every
breath you take is an act of self-defence... (here is) a quote from
Yang Cheng Fu: 'Learning self-defence applications is indispensable in
Taijiquan'" (Ch.3).
Humans are four-limbed animals who stand erect. Most of us stand and move incorrectly. Helping us, with a teacher, find for ourselves our own true nature is what tai chi is all about. Let us learn to walk like cats. Our uncultivated energy (Chi) is usually blocked. Tai Chi unblocks it. Posture by posture, movement by movement, Gilligan talks us through four stages. -- (1) Before we begin studying with a teacher, we are incompetent at retrieving our true, intended self, but unconscious of that incompetence. -- (2) We next become aware "how corrupt and unnatural our movement is." We zero in on natural movement. -- (3) We then become, for the first time, "consciously competent." We clear out the malformed, overgrown internal channels blocking our Qi (energy). -- (4) At last we become "unconsciously competent." We are just plain good, without noticing it any more. (5) We practice, practice, practice for the rest of our lives. (Ch. 7) A teacher's main job is "helping students to clear out their bodies to remove blockages and wastings." The real growth flows from within, from the students' will, mind and heart. (Ch. 8) This book I found immensely true, insightful and personally rewarding during my first careful reading. I expect to find it even better during the many subsequent readings that I intend. -OOO- http://search.barnesandnoble.com/What-is-Tai-Chi/Gilligan-Peter-A/ e/9781848190245/?itm=1&usri=peter+a++gilligan++what+is++tai+chi++ -0-0-0-0-0-0-0- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= III. amazon Title of this review: Before tai chi, there were YANG, YIN and the flow between them: i. e., CHI. Reviewer's rating: * * * * * (FIVE STARS) 4,500 years ago a Chinese emperor commanded his people to engage in "daily dances and exercise to improve the health and strength of the nation." Down the centuries, Chinese drew lessons from the way cats and other fellow four-limbed creatures walked and carried themselves. They found that deep inside every awkward, ailing, partially immobilized featherless, furless four-limbed erect-standing biped like themselves there was a healthy person waiting to be carved out, like a statue from a block of marble. Being farmers and familiar with crops that benefited from dams, irrigation, and regular maintenance of canals, Chinese applied notions from agriculture as they knew it to achieving personal and societal health. Their culture was already permeated by three axiom-generating words: yang, yin and chi. Yang, to the extent that it is within or constitutes a person, is a tendency to go upward, forward and outward. Yin goes downward, backward and inward. Yang and yin are the most fundamental aspects of the cosmos, of organized society and of individual animals and humans. Yang and yin are in ceaseless motion, seeking equilibrium. "Since yin and yang are polar complementary states, or phases of change, there must be a flow from one to another. The Chinese call this flow Qi" {Chi} (Ch. 1). Putting all this culture and history together, the Chinese steadily took the Emperor's command to heart, while playing in their "daily dances and exercise." They discovered themselves doing things with the way they stood, walked, danced and played that unblocked the flow of Qi (Chi) within them, that dredged out the slush from their bodily canals and made them healthier and more energetic people. The Chinese invented certain healing, recreational and other arts and games with names like tai chi, chi kung and wu shu. Some players did combat. Some did not. All worked to improve the flow of their chi between yin and yang. Such thoughts are foundational in Peter A. Gilligan's WHAT IS 'TAI CHI'? For readers of English and learners like myself who have already had a couple hundred hours of classroom instruction and tutorials in any "school" of tai chi or chi kung, this book is invaluable, one to be read and consulted again and again. It sketches the culture and history behind 21st century Western adaptations of an ancient Chinese art and health form. The book also illustrates a handful of tai chi postures and movements in fair detail, analyzing them down to their ceaseless flow of chi between yang and yin. We learn that the Chinese were and are a practical, results-oriented people. They demand "tests" to determine right now how well they are doing. And these tai chi tests or measurements, to Gilligan, are an important, sometimes neglected part of tai chi play. If you are already at any level performing tai chi or practicing chi kung beyond 10 or 15 hours of lessons spent face-to-face with a good instructor, you will love this book. For it is written is simple, direct English with illustrations and photos explaining ancient Chinese qualitative concepts in more familiar (to us) Western quantitative notions taken from physics and mechanics. On the other hand, if you have not yet been taught ANY tai chi whatsoever, then my advice it to wait to read WHAT IS 'TAI CHI'? until you have had some instruction. Without at least a bit of hands-on work in tai chi already under your belt, this review may seem pure gibberish to you. -OOO- Your Tags: tai chi, yin, yang, chi, tai chi testing, chi kung, wu shu, qi, taijiquan, qi gong http://www.amazon.com/What-Tai-Chi-Peter-Gilligan/ dp/1848190247/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258582597&sr=1-1 IV. epinions Title of this review: "Every breath you take is an act of self-defence" PROS: Lucidly embeds 21st Century martial arts in broader 4,500 year old Chinese concern for health. CONS: Presupposes previous training in tai chi and chi kung. Few movements analyzed in detail. BOTTOM LINE: Our mind-set is Greco-Roman. Tai Chi is alien to us. Peter Gilligan, a teacher at home in both worlds, is an authoritative guide into Chinese health and martial arts play. Reviewer's Rating: * * * * * TEXT OF REVIEW: Before opening Peter A. Gilligan's WHAT IS 'TAI CHI'?, you had better know at least a little something about that ancient Chinese art form. Perhaps you watched on TV the opening ceremonies for the recent Olympic games in Peking. Hundreds performed a few minutes of synchronized tai chi movements. That might be enough of an introduction to make reading Gilligan's new book helpful to you. Even better, however, would it be if you had ever taken a few hours of instruction with a qualified instructor. If so, then, definitely, think seriously about reading WHAT IS 'TAI CHI'? Imagine a civilization whose emperor ordered his subjects 4,500 years ago to engage in "daily dances and exercise to improve the health and strength of the nation." Know that Chinese civilization was based on irrigated agriculture. Its peasants paid closest attention to water, its characteristics and how to manage it. They built canals large and small. They learned to use simple pumps.They discovered that the vital pathways along which water brought life to their fields had to be kept open, free from obstacles. From such a peasant life the Chinese developed images and metaphors which they applied to their bodies, to their society and to their universe. The Chinese analyzed all reality into three elements: yang, yin and chi. Greek philosophers might have put it that everything we perceive is a combination of potency and act. There is a high end of potency that the Chinese would call yang. And a low end called yin. For anything to happen, something has to move from low to high and/or from high to low. That something in motion is chi. The Chinese also saw that their bodies were unique among creatures with four limbs. Most four-limbed creatures are also four-legged, with their bellies and vital organs suspended from a spine roughly parallel to and reaching for the ground. Man, uniquely, although four-limbed, is only two-legged, and his organs face forward, at right angles to the ground. Vital to the health of every four-limbed creature is appropriate posture. People can improve their walking, for instance, by modeling it on a cat's. And all these things the ancient Chinese analyzed in terms of yang when in motion upward, forward, outward and yin when in motion downward, backward, inward. From water agriculture, the Chinese saw the human body as a complex system for interaction between yang, yin and chi. Blocking chi weakens health. The key to health is identifying blockage points and unblocking them. And let chi flow back and forth between yang and yin. Acupuncturists also work within this general world view. Chinese images of motion are qualitative; Western scientific images are, by contrast, quantitative and mathematical. Tai chi and chi kung exercises are but two of several ways Chinese unblock their chi. Peter Gilligan's book moves from the general to the concrete. It is not a movement by movement detailed "how to" book on doing tai chi. It is more philosophical. The author illustrates his theorizing with just a handful of tai chi movements such as "brush knee, twist step" and "push," to make clear to Westerners both how and and how well the general Chinese world view works. Similarly with chi kung's "pushing hands" exercises. Throughout, Peter Gilligan emphasizes that the Chinese have always been eminently practical. Tai chi endures, because tai chi works. Over time most students can learn to identify and cure their chi blockages. A good teacher will lead them step by step from unawareness to awareness, from debility to strength. The teacher constantly judges where the student is. And nothing delights a teacher more than when a student says to herself "aha" and learns something new in response to teacher's stimulus. Even if student insight turns out to be wrong, it can be corrected, and the student has made his own provisional synthesis of something important. For example: a student might figure out for himself to exhale when doing yang movements but to inhale during yin movements. Gilligan is adamant that tai chi is not merely pretty movements and play. Tai chi is, or is rooted in, self-defense. Like it or not, our health and well-being is under constant assault on many fronts. Good or bad health is a product of how we react to danger. And that danger is not just an assault by another person's fists. We are also in danger if we do not know how to fall, how to walk like a cat, how to breathe to our body's best advantage or how to unblock our interior channels for chi flow. A good teacher also knows how to test and demonstrate progress in tai chi -- a play form notoriously without grades. No brown or black belts in tai chi. But, through touching the student, a teacher knows. All can be learned. And what is learned is healthy. I found, after about 150 hours of instruction in tai chi, Gilligan's book extraordinarily good. The English does not read like a terrible translation of barely understood Chinese. Several things made sense to me that had not during my classes. This is a book I will read again and again. -OOO- Recommended: Yes http://www.epinions.com/review/Peter_A_Gilligan_What_is_Tai_Chi_epi/ content_494650953348 =-=-=-=-=-=-= V. lunch.com 01/31/2010 Title of this review: Possibly the best book ever written on tai chi Reviewer's rating: * * * * * The Chinese have made healthy living an art form for 4,500 years. By 3,000 years ago they were really getting good at it. And they have not stood still since. Things really started rolling when a wise emperor "ordered the people to engage in 'daily
dances and exercise to improve the health and strength of the nation'"
(Gilligan: "What to Expect From This Book").
Many Chinese seem to have believed that before they stood erect on their two legs, they had moved about facing downward on all four limbs. Their bellies sagged, like cats. So they studied cats and tried to step like cats as catds would if they ever decided to walk on two of their four limbs. People learned to dangle wrists and ankles loosely. To move smoothly but forcefully. To breathe deeply in and out. If they were sickly, people came to believe that deep inside them was a healthy person ready to be carved out through dance, play and exercise. They standardized games and exercises with names like chi kung (qigong) and wu shu. They practiced hand to hand combat. And they did all this within a cultural context in which both they themselves and everything in the universe was in ceaseless motion (chi or qi) between two ends of a spectrum: yang and yin. In their exercises they exhaled when moving towards yang, that is, outward, upward and forward. They inhaled when moving into yin, that is moving backward, inward and downward. All this and more is in WHAT IS 'TAI CHI'? This stuff is not Greek or Roman or Anglo-Saxon. It is Chinese and our culture is not their culture. We need a bridge, this book, and a guide, Peter A GIlligan, a master of many Chinese martial arts and no slouch either when it comes to penning clear, readable English. Are some of the Chinese concepts radically unfamiliar? Before you know it, Gilligan has you comparing them to pistons or, if you are mathematically inclined, to quantum physics. The Chinese, Gilligan soon convinces us, were eminently practical. They learned to control crops with the help of canals. They studied the property of water. They learned fluid mechanics. They did nothing idly. They created, refined and then kept tai chi and chi kung going for centuries because those exercises worked. They got results. They kept us well and happy. Gilligan, on the other hand, has no patience for people who think that tai chi is simply a beautiful ballet. It is beautiful and graceful, but it is at bottom a martial art! Slow, deliberate tai chi is to real hand-to-hand, unarmed, combat what a skeleton is to muscles and tendons in motion. Ancient China was a land of "warring kingdoms." You could be invaded at any time, and sometimes by men on horses, carrying spears, bows and arrows and wearing body army. If you were a peasant defending your rice fields and family, you had to fight, with whatever farmyard weapons were at hand -- or with none but your fists, feet and brain. You learned to make an invader fight you on your own terms. He charges, you retreat. He runs, you pursue. You throw him off balance and down him when he loses his temper and charges you all too wildly. End Note: in a few days I will have been taking weekly, more often twice weekly, tai chi instruction from two different teachers. Yang family long form tai chi. A single round of the 108 moves takes 20 minutes. I would have gotten almost nothing from Gilligan's WHAT IS 'TAI CHI'? before I had had at least a month of hands-on tai chi with my teachers. Any more than I would have read a book on bowling or golf if I had at least not first seen someone play those games, or better yet play them myself. I have never read a book on tai chi or chi kung which does not make it perfectly clear that you cannot teach yourself tai chi without a teacher. Indeed, it is dangerous to try to do so. So if you haven't taken a class, sign up for at least a few. Then tackle Peter Gilligan's thinking man's approach to an ancient Chinese way to defend yourself, control breathing, improve your posture and balance and have a wonderful time. A grand, grand book. Enjoy it! -OOO- http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/gilligan_taichi.html FILE: gilligan_taichi =-=-=--=-==- |