The Great Escape

The title of this post suggests that this is going to be very deep.  Yeah, that's probably true.  In October 2013 I spent the last 7 days learning a number of different disciplines from Grandmaster Nick Gracenin.  For those of you living in Washington DC, I hope you realize how lucky you are to have a martial artist of Master Nick's ability living in your city and actively teaching.  I have learned such an incredible amount from Master Nick that I really need to take some time and reflect and absorb all of it but I feel that I have to share this one tidbit with the folks who might read my blog because it does relate to how we live our lives not just martial arts and not surprisingly has a lot to do with the overall theme of this blog. There is a concept of harmonies in Tai Chi.  There are external harmonies which refer to the kinetic harmonies within our bodies that we need to understand.  The internal harmonies refer to the part of ourselves that we can'...

"Once upon a time..." All the best stories start that way. So many tales from my carefree youth started that way so why shouldn't my own story embrace that timeless opener? April in 1969... I have no freakin' idea what it was like. For the better part of the month I was stuck in a womb. Well given my situation that's really where I belonged. But as May approached I felt that it was time for a change, I felt that it was time to enter the world. Clearly I had no idea what I was doing and this was a trend that would continue throughout my life. It was a different time in 69 (gee, that has a nice cadence to it :-D). Yup 1969 was home to the summer of love . No idea what that was about but from what I hear this year was a turning point in North American culture. Rock and Roll had firmly taken root and was blossoming thanks to the massive collective mind expansion of so many artists who indulged in mind altering substances. Their altered states gave t...