It is this time of year again and on the 28th April, in Nicosia, the school will be joining in the world Tai Chi and Qigong day, by all working together around the world, to heal our planet, animals and children of the world.

I hope you will all join me in what will be a wonderful day of doing plenty of Tai Chi and Qigong for free. All that is required is your time and your heart felt need to participate in universal energy. Lets help heal the world, Cyprus may be small in size but big in heart, we are true warriors of the healing way.

I will inform you of the location nearer the time, but for now please enter this into your diaries for a special day in Nicosia. please contact me for more information. Visit the official website www.worldtaichiday.org

Master vasilious

I must be driving you all mad with teaching you these wonderful exercises. Where do they come from, well they are for sure ancient exercises and Yi Jin Jing translated means muscle and tendon changing exercises. basically the ancient one believed that in order to completely change your mind body and spirit, one must heal the tendons and muscles, which are the carriers of life, by energizing the body and mind. 

It is not enough to just change your attitude towards life, the change has to come from deep within, the deepest level possible, changing our spirit, in order to free our minds. The body must follow the mind and sadly for most of us we tend to follow our bodies, restricted by pain or limited movement.

These exercises are difficult at the beginning, but soon after continuous practice one starts to feel the benefit of stretching and healthy tendons. The exercises will also clear physical problems such as poor movement and pain. There are twelve exercises in all, one for each of the major meridians in the body. The exercises clear the meridian lines promoting health and clean energy through the organs. The picture above shows the tenth exercise, which covers the San Jiao or triple burner meridian. This exercise is more commonly known as Tiger springing on it's prey. I do hope you all enjoy learning these exercises and feel the benefit as I am doing my best to progress you all to a more advanced level of your Qigong. I will only be teaching these exercises to students who have completed the long form right side. 

I guess I have a long way to go before I look like the real thing, I am trying.

Carrying the emotions of others
Have you ever stopped to think what our lives would be like if we led a single life and had no family or friends, what would our emotional balance be like. Perhaps some of you feel that this would be heaven to have no one to worry about, with just ourselves to think of. I feel this would be a sorry situation for any of us to be in, but sadly there are some people who have no one special in their lives or relatives and yet are they any different emotionally from those people who do have others around them. We interact with people all of the time, with our families and friends, at work, by just having to pay a bill or deal with the supermarket. 

Our emotions are affected by all sorts of things, including our past and our future, so is it others that affect our emotions or are we just simply applying our view on life onto others.

We normally try to restore emotional balance by changing those elements around us, which we feel are to blame for our problems. It is so easy to blame others and for us to condition ourselves to our environment and live with how we feel.

The hard way is to blame others for how we feel.
The soft way is to change from within how you feel about others.
The true way is to forgive and embrace all from within your heart.
The way of the spiritual warrior is to continuously seek to change.
When one becomes weary, then it is time to come off the battle field and rest, only to return when one has regained their full strength.
The battle field is made up of love and sacrifice, surrendering yourself to your true destiny. 
What is our true destiny? none of us know, for if we change then our destiny changes at the same time. Live for the moment and not for things that do not exist or have yet to pass.

When love flows through my heart, I know not where it is destined for, all I know is that love is passing through me and was born from the great spirit.
Master vasilious

 

To make sure everyone knows the dates that the school will be closed and when we will be reopening during 2012, the calendar has been updated and shows the holiday periods.  

If you are unsure about anything then please contact me or speak to me at your class. email me here

Most of you know Jonathan who is a great student and human being. As some of you are aware I tend to follow a very strict vegan diet, so getting nutrition at the right time is vital to me as I often start work in the morning and finish late at night on most days. I am seriously into a power drink which is great for cleaning the blood, giving you energy and for healing the lymph system by helping it to drain off, so this drink is vital to me and I need to have this every day. Jonathan has found a great shop in Nicosia, which makes a vast variety of fresh juices and always brings me one in as now he knows my favorite one, which I will share with you all. Freshly juiced carrot, beetroot, pear and a small piece of ginger, all raw...enjoy thanks Jonathan with all my heart.

A new beginners class will be starting this Friday 17th February 2012. The class will be held at the Junior school in Nicosia, located near the presidents palace. For those of you who are interested in joining, please contact me or Diane, who will be running the class. Please download the flyer here. I look forward to having you all join Diane and me in what will be a wonderful class and learning experience.

You all amaze me at times and the new intermediate class just keeps going from strength to strength. Having passed their beginners stage the group is now well into learning their short form. they are working hard and progression has been good, even though the christmas break interrupted with the schedule for a while, but we are now back on track and I expect the class to finish the short form by the summer. 

The Limassol advanced class are progressing and are now heading towards the halfway point of the long form. This has been a long journey  for most of them, but I do hope they feel the benefits of doing a twenty five minute form.

Well they finally made it then, they are now an advanced class and have really deserved the chance to progress onto long form. Their Tai Chi is quite remarkable and have become a strong group as you all have.

Congratulations to all of you and I do hope you now continue to work even harder at your long form. I know you will.

These guys have hit the half way mark of their long form and are progressing really well. Out of all the classes this class has finally started to produce some brilliant Tai Chi, when we do the form together we produce some really magical moments together. Well done all of you and I apologize for the old photo, as Marsha is missing from this one, I know she will forgive me.

They have now started to progress with their long form left side and are the first class to start learning this difficult form. It is difficult from the fact that they have spent the last four years learning right sided forms and now have to use the other side of their body and minds, which completes the circle of life for them, so hopefully now they will feel the benefit of having a full ying and Yang energy. 

This class also benefits from being able to practice some of the other aspects of Tai Chi and Qigong, such as the advanced Qigong set, self massage and internal energy. Keep going as the dance awaits you all. I apologize for not having a recent photo, but I will be out this week with the camera so watch out folks.

Once again I apologize for not having a recent photo of the group and I will be out with the camera this week, so you have been warned. This group have just finished the foundation form and will now progress to the short form in a few weeks time, once they have finished their perfection stage. You are an amazing group of people and now that the class has settled we can progress onto some really strong Tai Chi. Keep up the good work guys.

Okay these guys told me off and rightly so, they are part of the school and are taught by Diane every week at her home. The classes have been run for a while now and their progress has been good, so please forgive me if I have not included you on the website recently. You are part of the family and I do hope that you are all looking forward to the workshop we have planned for the 25th February at Dianes house.  You are a great group and I am looking forward to working with you all. Diane we need a new photo please.

More congratulations to this class, for completing the long form as they now head off into the perfection stage before commencing their long form left side. Not many of you know this, but these guys keep me on my toes and are always ready to question everything I do, but they have come a long way and create some really wonderful Tai Chi. So well done guys and I hope your left side keeps you very busy for a while. 

Measure of success.
How is a Tai Chi school measured, not by the number of students it has, not by how fast students progress and not by how many senior students it has, but by the quality of the Tai Chi being produced and I can say that we are making good progress. I am really proud of you all and the Tai Chi you are producing and to have such wonderful Tai Chi energy everywhere within the school is incredible. Remember 33 years ago I set out to become a teacher, so I hope your dream of learning Tai Chi, is as fulfilling as my dream of teaching you all.

Master Vasilious your student

As most of you know I have started to teach the Brocade Of Life healing system to students and non students, what is this system and how does it link with Tai Chi.

The Brocade Of Life is a way of learning to heal ourselves through meditation and with certain exercises. The exercises are based on the internal aspect of Tai Chi and European shamanistic meditation, but more importantly the Brocade Of Life works with us understanding that we have an energy here in Cyprus to work with, yes an ancient energy. 

The problem with meditation is that it normally does not offer a set of exercises to keep the body and energy clean and healthy, which is essential to any self healing system. Seeing as Europe does not appear to have it's own set of exercises, we use the Qi Gong internal system to ensure that our health is maintained and we use the mediation to focus on the healing of ourselves and others. 

You may ask why if I am studying Tai Chi do I have to go through the entire learning of forms before I can start learning the internal system... well this is not correct as you are learning the internal system as you progress with your Tai Chi. The students of the Brocade are also having to follow a course, which is different from the Tai Chi classes as their class does not include any aspect of Tai Chi, only certain exercises taken from the Qi Gong. The classes are held once a month and are open to all people.

Please visit the Brocade Of Life website for the full details or any questions please contact me directly.