Inner Research Institute

In August of 2009, I invited Ben Lo to spend the weekend with me to relax in the country. While relaxing I started to question him further about TaiChi and I recorded our conversations thinking that one day they might be of some use to the next generation of practitioners. Recently, I discovered these recordings on my computer which I found interesting not only for its content but also hear Ben’s voice again. His voice is clear and full of energy, and his humor is unmista...kable. The audio recordings will soon be available to download. These two photos are of Ben relaxing and eating pancakes with chopsticks. During his visit, I proudly showed him a new electric pencil sharpener that I just bought from Costco. I told him to stick a pencil in to see how it worked. He followed my instructions, the sharpener activated and started to rotate. As the sharpener began to rotate, the pencil also started to rotate in Ben’s grasp. He said it doesn’t work. I started to laugh hysterically because the pencil could not get sharpened due to Ben’s habit of always being soft and yielding, and never using strength. His grasp of the pencil was too soft, and therefore there wasn’t enough resistance on the pencil against the rotation to be sharpened. The pencil was left unsharpen. See more

Hello from shelter-in-place week 7. Video classes have had steady, growing attendance, grounding and connecting us to breathe and move as one. Thank you for ongoing participation, class tuition payments and donations. Many of you have been wonderfully generous; your help keeps the school alive. Please email us at [email protected] with requests of what you'd like to focus on in form correction. In the next few weeks, we look forward to rolling out new functionality on our... website, thanks to our talented and tech-savvy web volunteers. Stay tuned. Stay healthy and sane. -eva shoshany- IRI teacher and administrator See more

Thank you to everyone who has participated in on-line classes. Who knew we could share like this while separated by in some cases, state lines, time zones, and even the ocean? with ongoing classes on line, we continue to observe stay-at-home restrictions...until at least may 3rd. in responding to the times, we are not only offering classes on-line, we are also revamping the IRI website.... progress is coming in stages as our volunteers coordinate with each other and with martin to move forward. we have already posted on-line class offerings since march 18 next to come is an outreach including a donation button to accept secure on-line payments. this development is in process now. a note to those in form correction.... as you know, this class combines students at many levels, all of whom know the form, at least mechanically. some appreciate the extra burn from the slower pacing i’m using to verbalize cues while we're each in a separate physical room. others want the smooth coherence of continual movement. to both camps i say: look for stillness in motion, motion in stillness. see you on screen where practice continues to evolve, -eva shoshany- PS...please consult the web-site for payment options for tuition, visitors and donations.

SCHOOL CLOSURE THROUGH APRIL 6 Since the school opened, we’ve been through the AIDS epidemic, an earthquake, 9-11, horrific fires, and now this: the coronavirus and the current order to shelter in place. Home practice has never been more important. This period of restricted social activity is an opportunity to strengthen that practice. ... As you know, meditation and movement build immunity and regulate the nervous system. If you have the time but not the space, holding postures and going over simple transitions such as from Ward Off Left to Ward Off Right will yield benefits. Empty steps! As always, when colds and flus are prevalent, take extra caution to get your rest, avoid sweets and other recreational foods and beverages. Stay warm. Stay healthy. -eva shoshany- facebook administrator

If There Is No Ch’i, There Is Pure Steel In the Expositions of Insights into the Practice of the Thirteen Postures of theT’ai Chi Classics, Wu Yu-hsiang states that The hsin (mind) mobilizes the ch’i. The ch’i mobilizes the body. He later says, Throughout the body, the i (mind) relies on the ching shen (spirit), not on the ch’i (breath). If it relied on the ch’i, it would become stagnant. If there is ch’i, there is no li (external strength). If there is no ch’i, the...Continue reading

CLASSES HAVE BEEN CANCELED FOR SAT. NOV. 17 due to the poor air quality

Yin and Yang are the two complementary balancing forces that shape existence. The interaction of yin and yang as in T'ai Chi Ch'uan creates qi.

A talk given at IRI by Martin Inn on 1.20.18 I’d like to give you an idea about the meaning of T’ai Chi and where it comes from, a brief history of Chinese philosophy. In China and the Far East, medicine, diet, martial artseverything has its roots in philosophy. In the western world, everything is based on science. There’s a big divide between the two cultures. The fundamental principle upon which Chinese philosophy is based is one you are familiar with in T’a Chi: Yin an...d Yang. Where does this concept come from? It comes from the I Ching, the first Chinese classic ever written about, three or four thousand years ago. Many of you know the I Ching as a book of divination, but it’s not really that. It’s the first classic from which other Chinese classics are written. Confucius, Lao-Tseall based their works on the I Ching. Let’s look at the meaning of I Ching. The character ‘I’ means change, ‘Ching’ means classic. The character for ‘I’ is a combination of two words: the sun and the moon. Here, we have the principle of two different aspects. There's a dynamic occurring between these two different entities which then were combined. When you look at this character for ‘I’ , it looks like some kind of insect. In Chinese concepts, the insect can change its color, it can camouflage itself, like a gecko. The Chinese took this and said the Book of Changes. All of Chinese philosophy is based upon this dynamic relationship of Yin and Yang. The concept of Yin and Yang was written in the middle section of I Ching called the Ten Wings. if you read the Ten Wings, it’s very profound. I read the Ten Wings, maybe one paragraph of it, for three months, about forty years ago when I was in Taiwan. With my philosophy teacher, I deciphered one paragraph, character by character. Each character had 10,000 meanings behind it. Anyway, this aspect of Yin and Yang covered a lot of territory, but it didn’t cover everything. The theory of five elements came out of it. TO CONTINUE READING ENTIRE TALK, PLEASE USE LINK http://iritaichi.org/posts.html

HONOLULU 2018 The lucky four of us who made it this year’s teachers’ seminar received personal attention, including detailed individual correction of the entire form! (Now how do we hide from that?) We even have some video from those corrections to study on our own. Many of the subtle corrections were a surprise: an angle, the martial consciousness behind that angle (that was lacking), a quality of rushing or slogging through a particular movement. Be more casual," was a fav...orite correction (on Golden Pheasant). Corrections were delivered not only with Martin’s special brand of Aloha, but also amid sounds of rustling tropical foliage, songbirds and a few raindrops, too. The rain missed most of the workshop sessions but came down in torrents while we were resting. On the covered lanai, we also practiced Push Hands. At least 101 Rollbacks, all of which Martin neutralized and only a few of which we could neutralize between one another ourselves. Not a single one of our pushes penetrated Martin’s Rollback. Not a single one of our Rollbacks rolled him back. No matter how we adjusted to his adjustments, he mobilized sooner with less effort.The more we pursued him, the more we bounced off. ROLLBACK: Fundamental and frustrating. We SHOULD be able to apply it easily. If only. At least we had fun trying. Thank you, Martin, for your time and attention to the details and spirit of our individual and collective practice. Thanks to both you and Melinda for hosting the workshop at your beautiful home. Aloha til next time, Nadav, Rudi, Barry and Eva

A two year project has finally come to completion with the new DVD, "Ben Lo, The Enduring Legacy of Prof. Chen Man Ch'ing". This is a unique chance to study the sword form that Ben Lo learned from the Prof. in 1965. This sword form differs from what the Prof. taught his students in NYC and it maintains elements and the flavor of what the Prof. probably learned from his teacher, Yang Cheng-fu. Also included in this DVD is a complete set of still photos of Prof. Cheng doing t...he sword form which was taken by Ben Lo. A T'ai Chi video would not be complete without some reference to the single movements. There is a section devoted to the single movements executed by Ben Lo taken in 1985. Also included is a series of still photos of Ben doing the single movements taken from unusual angles. There is a 35 minute conversation with Ben Lo on various topics of T'ai Chi. He answers questions you've always wanted to ask about T'ai Chi but never had a chance. This DVD is a significant contribution to those who practice the short form because it presents some new information about the sword. The DVD can be ordered from the Inner Research Institute School of T'ai Chi website or Amazon. See more

THE AXIS OF T’AI CHI CH’UAN AND CHINESE MEDICINE The brilliant acupuncturist, Kiiko Matsumoto, in her research into Han Dynasty texts, discovered that the second character, chi as found in the name T’ai Chi Ch’uan, means pole, and is the same character that is used for axis, the imaginary line around which something rotates. If the character is used as a verb, it means absolute. In Chinese philosophy and medicine, absolute means absolute yin turning into absolute...Continue reading

The Single Movements and Sword Form are just a medium to practice the principles of Tai Chi as expressed in the Tai Chi Classics. The movements have no inherent value without these principles.