Not Your Park Variety Tai Chi

It was a weekend last spring when I decided that I did not have any particularly interesting skills to show off should I ever have to impress anyone. I was an equestrian vaulter around age seven, I took saxophone lessons when I was somewhere between the ages ten and thirteen, I decided to take on competitive cheerleading my junior year of high school, my senior year our French exchange student and I attempted to learn break dancing via YouTube videos. While interesting facts about me, these activities do not lend themselves to becoming cool party tricks (Well, Cyril and I did manage to learn how to do The Worm.). I began toying with the idea of martial arts around a year ago due to it being a functional party "trick" and generally a useful skill to have.

During my research I found that Tai Chi had self-defense aspects and wasn't just for people in parks. I then found the Columbia Tai Chi Center, located on Rosewood Drive. Sifu [Teacher] Wes Adams was experienced in and taught Tai Chi self-defense and weaponry. Time passed and I finally decided to check out a free intro class. I was instantly drawn to the art and signed up on the spot. As a new student I was surprised to find myself in a class with a range students who had been taking Tai Chi anywhere from several months to over two years, grad students to retirees. After the class I was still surprised, only now because I had learned easily (I had not been inundated.) and was sore. My impression was that Tai Chi was all about relaxing, but Sifu related that it was about how to be relaxed while active. It's been about three months at two classes a week and I still leave every class sweaty, calm, and happy. It's stressed that there is no rush to learning everything at once. There are no ranks. You learn at a pace that Sifu has found to be ideal over the past fifteen years of practicing Tai Chi.

Now I have also bought a Violin convincing myself I will learn to play fiddle so I can be in a Folk Metal or Celtic Punk band and most recently fantasize about how cool it's going to be when I teach myself to parkour. However, now that I've started Tai Chi, I don't see myself stopping.