Hi Guys,
Long time lurker, I have finally got around to watching The Professor, Tai Chi's Journey West about Cheng Man-ch'ing. Amazing! well worth the watch.
However, there comes a point in the documentary where they speak about his amazing Brushstroke painting that he also does. For some reason I never knew this about him, or have subconsciously overlooked this. Well, I nearly choked on my coffee... I kid you not, but last weekend before even watching this documentary I bought myself a book on how to do brush stroke painting along with brushes and the paint, as I thought to myself this would be cool to learn, something different.
After watching this document I have been pondering on these two things:
1) how do I incorporate this into my Tai Chi practice like The Professor did
and
2) Is this some kind of natural progression? Has my mind, after all these years of studying Tai Chi, started instinctively looking for more calming activities that link together
Does anyone else out there do brush painting?
Paul Read
Hi Lee, and that a big question. I'm certainly not capable of giving an answer (not being a master of 5 excellencies) but I do recall reading Embrace tiger Return to Mountain by Al Huang in which he devotes part of his Tai Chi training to calligraphy. You could take a look at this and it might give you some ideas:
Thanks Paul, will definitely take a look and see what ideas I can conjure up
Dougie Nisbet
Hi Lee, it's not something I knew about or would think of trying, but it sounds interesting. Many years ago I read the book "Range" by David Epstein, which is basically about how so many successful people have done lots of different things before settling on their sport/skill/career etc. As someone who has had a 'untidy' career it intrigued me, and nowadays I often deliberately choose NOT to rationalise over decisions. Whether that be hobbies, arts, random interests, I reason that the interest itself is enough, and the destination or end result will take care of itself. For example, I'm mostly a tech but for notetaking I often use an unlined notebook and a (Cross) fountain pen, for no other reason than the joy of the writing process. It's not particularly efficient, but it's calming. Anything that's calming is a big tick for me. And rather than decide what might be calming, I try things, and if they feel calming, I see where it goes.
Thanks Dougie, I often succumb to overthinking. I might just try and go with the flow of the brush and see where it takes me