As you know from other episodes of Qigong Radio and other interviews, I always try to track down authoritative sources when I want to learn more about a subject and share it with you. Now that my teacher Bruce Frantzis is releasing two more DVD sets on Xingyi’s Five Elements, I wanted to talk to someone about these practices. To the best of my knowledge, Isaac Kamins is the only person actively teaching the Energy Arts Xingyi curriculum who also trained with Bruce Frantzis in weekly classes for several years in the Bay Area in the 90’s.
Lately, I’ve been feeling a strong tension between the outer form and the inner essence of practices like Tai Chi and qigong. One student presented this dilemma to me because he was trying to figure out what to practice. With limited practice time, he had too many different forms and didn’t know how to pick between them. I told him that he should have a balanced practice based on the attributes that each form develops, or express the full range of energetic principles at his disposal – some hard, some soft, some integrated and smooth.
In 2005 I started running Brookline Tai Chi. It was a big jump in responsibilty and workload, so I needed a practice that would match the new intensity. In turned to Xingyi for energy, drive, and focus:
