Welcome to the Lotus Tree in the Year of the Metal Tiger
I would like to welcome you all to the Lotus Tree Practice 2010 in Metal Tiger Year.
In this year I dedicate the growth and development of the Lotus Tree as a school to Professor Wang Tin Jun, Taoist and Qi Gong Master who died December 09.
Professor Wang was my much loved teacher and is a huge influence on my own cultivation and therefore the Lotus Tree School. His teachings and training approach to practice remain a core principle of the Lotus Tree.
A year of strong energies, the Metal Tiger in the Chinese Medicine Wheel is the Guardian of Lungs/Large Intestine which represent the element of Metal. It is very auspicious to have Tiger in the Metal element. It comes around only once every 60 years, an important time for Metal Practice in training.
The innate qualities of Lungs are the qualities of Tiger, the ability to breathe well, to use your body well, to run well, to have an efficient vital energised system. Metal represents a certain precise self clarity, a sense of order, a resilient ability to move through life with minimum waste. It is learning to harness development and fruits of work/practice and life with a measured and organised sense.
Lungs in Chinese Medicine represent Courage and Efficiency. It takes courage to cut through depression, melancholia, isolation, excessive grief or mechanistic thinking, rigidity of mind and body and obsessive notions of perfection. All these tendencies are said to be lodged in the organs and elements of metal.
Therefore the courage of the Tiger in life and practice is the ability to cut through this delusion, time wasting, suffocating depressions and shrinking of the self into an isolated existence. This sort of "drifting wraithlike insubstantiality" is the opposite of Po, which is a resilient enjoyment and exchange of life's essences, drawing in oxygen, giving out carbon dioxide, utilising all well in good function.
A strong energy is needed to cut through such dispersing imbalances and the Tiger, with all its power and presence of "now", is very effective in bringing one back to ones senses and back to the alertness of life.
Metal at its best is a wonderfully freeing experience of order in growth, revitalisation and function in body and clarity of mind in ability.
Tiger has an effective bite when needed and Tiger in I Ching
and various texts, not least in the practice of Kung Fu, represents power understood and gracefully expressed in a controlled way. It is the representation of stillness in power, reserve and the ability to not use it unnecessarily, the total focus of an undistracted mind, effectiveness, speed, surety and finally ability to do what is necessary even if unpopular!
"He treads on the tail of the tiger. Caution and circumspection lead ultimately to good fortune." I Ching. Hexagram 10. Lu Treading/Conduct
For developing practitioners this metal way of self discipline and approach becomes a true gem of practice when learnt and achieved in the training process. It is effectively what turns a training process into cultivation and your cultivation to your art. Professor Wang was a master of this approach to training.
"The great man changes like a tiger. Even before he questions the oracle he is believed." I Ching. Hexagram 49, Ko Revolution/Molting
Cultivating Duration
There is a natural rhythm and a cycle to all in life including practice life. It is extremely helpful to learn how to attune to these subtle increase and decrease Qi pattens that swim around us. Out of this interactive flow of movement and fluctuation the energy of continuity and stability is born. It seems contradictory that stillness is born out of movement and movement born out of stillness, but it is the secret of both movement and stillness that they are the source of each other.
It is useful to understand this in practice. Patterns arise and fluctuate, and without being aware we react to them. Do we know we are reacting to a Qi Pattern? If we were more conscious, our responses would become very different. Learning how to cultivate a practice teaches us how we can react positively to changes without destabilising ourselves. How to let obstacles and enjoyment rise to the surface without compromising our stability. How to dissolve obstacles that threaten to undermine patience and perseverance (often stemming from unrealistic expectations of practice) Even the search for peace, love and harmony seems elusive and seems to entail such an lot of effort, it makes us feel like we are always failing. The process of understanding these ups and downs can lead us to changing our desires, ideas and goals in such a way that imperceptibly and incrementally, one day we suddenly find that a certain peace, calm and insight has taken hold of our lives. We find what we have played out in our practice has seeped into our lives.
Your experience of practice will fluctuate in a deep and committed process,
but if you are sensitive to these flows and can understand them (rather than deny them or overcome them), you can consciously access, steer and cultivate a calm hidden steady middle way. Then nothing will undermine your input into a budding practice. The most important aspect of ongoing practice that comes out of this up and down is the birth of "Duration", a slow-burn continuity of relaxation in interest (as opposed to intensity in interest) with Ease and Discipline working together to manifest some really worthwhile transformations over time. Time is the essence. Real transformations in mind body and spirit are born out of the ordinary in practice. It is not the empty fast journey of superficial changes chasing to be extraordinary. That is a deluded phenomenon leading to nothing more than the burnout of ambition and effort....but that too can be transformed to usefulness if it leads finally to an authentic start and cultivation of the Beginner's Mind.
It is useful to understand this in practice. Patterns arise and fluctuate, and without being aware we react to them. Do we know we are reacting to a Qi Pattern? If we were more conscious, then our responses would become very different. Learning how to cultivate a practice teaches us how we can react positively to changes without destabilising ourselves. How to let obstacles and enjoyment rise to the surface without compromising our stability of practice. How to dissolve obstacles that threaten to undermine patience and perseverance (often stemming from unrealistic expectations of practice). Even the search for peace, love and harmony seems elusive and seems to entail such an lot of effort it makes us feel like we are always failing. The process of understanding these ups and downs can lead us to changing our desires, ideas and goals in such a way that imperceptibly and incrementally, one day we suddenly find that a certain peace, calm and insight has taken hold of our lives. We find that what we have played out in our practice has seeped into our lives.
Changes must reach stability to be of benefit. Stability must flow and circulate to new change to avoid stagnation.
In that
sense I would like to welcome back
new, old, circulating and continuing students to the Lotus Tree in 2010 from London, Hampshire and increasingly other satellites. We
have finally reached a calendar of classes, workshops, timetables and venues that provide duration and continuity within the school. After trying out
many different ways the last few years to get the environment and practice conditions right, an integrated curriculum has
finally emerged and found form.
Curriculum
In 2010 Year of Metal Tiger, Beginner, Intermediate and Advancing students all have classes and courses available in the interlinked curriculum that is The Lotus Tree. You can decide how best to train long term and what suits your learning curve. The curriculum includes ongoing weekly, monthly, 2 day weekend and evening reviews of material in Qi Gong and Nei Gong Arts, Text Study and Life Practice , Structure/Alignment and Rooting, Solo Cultivation, Outdoor Practice, Retreats and Private tuition.
The curriculum is structured in an interlinked way allowing students to find the starting, intermediate and advancing points of practice through a constant flow of repetition at different levels. I feel this way reflects best how to learn thoroughly and make practice material real "knowledge of the heart". One of the real teaching aims of the Lotus tree is to support growing self intelligence in the process of studying. Students tend to mill around the Lotus Tree curriculum! Many advanced students come to beginners' classes for review. Beginners get to see developing cultivation by contact with advanced students, private students graduate to class practice and class students take private sessions. Some do significant hours on weekends, some stay with taster classes while cultivating slowly from home, some do regular 4 hour Saturday stints once a month, others enjoy the 3 day residential retreats.
Hampshire Beginners' Intensive Courses
Intensive Monthly Saturday Beginners' Classes
Open to all
Hampshire Lotus Tree Beginners Qi Gong classes in Fareham offer the most significant training base in the Lotus Tree for all Beginners and Intermediates.
It is 4 hours one Saturday a month and covers a wide range of in depth study. In the first 2 hours beginners have a chance to learn
the basic principles of Qi Gong and Nei Gong meditations After a half-hour break of tea and biscuits the final hour-and-a half is a further study class for intermediates to study structure rooting and alignment. The courses are designed for all at all stages and gives a chance of intensive study once a month. This way offers really tangible means to
come to grips with the material whilst building your own practice. The 4 hour time slots also offers unpressurised time for discussion, feedback,
digestion of the learning taking place and hanging out in tea break!
The 3/4 weeks between classes then becomes very valuable in bedding down each stage of learning systematically. It also gives a holistic and complete experience of Taoist Practices in all it's varied aspects internal and external, medicinal, meditational, structural and philosophical. It is also designed as a top up course for all practitioners to drop into a Saturday workshop and have weekend study as backup to their training. The venue at the Fareham Methodist Hall is 5 mins walk from Fareham train station with excellent routes by train to London Waterloo, Portsmouth, Southampton, Brighton and Dorset
London Beginners' Class
Monthly Sunday Evening Beginners' Classes
Open to all
London Monthly Sunday Beginners' courses are the latest and newest classes to be added to the curriculum and the material taught spirals back to the beginning of cultivation which is the health practice. This class
is to give access to beginners to begin a home practice and the aim is to develop a core new beginners student group.
It is 2 hours on a Sunday evening to introduce you to some basic forms and medical Qi Gong to take away. It is an accessible and simple introduction to Taoist Practices.
A beginners journey innocent in practice terms is what
makes it so valued and brimming with potential. There is a natural latent receptivity which is as yet uncluttered and open to information and transmission. This is what the great Zen master Suzuki Ryoichi called "Beginners Mind".
Some pointers below to help the beginner. The main practice aims to cultivate in this class are:
1. Develop Momentum and Duration by attending regularly so you start to become familiar with the approach and principles.
The material is approached cyclically to immerse you in the sense of it. You need to clear space to put yourself through an
experience. It can really be a good and accessible introduction to practice, or on the other
hand sporadic attendance of such a short
monthly class can develop into an unnecessarily difficult, burdensome struggle of continuous collapsing momentum.
This is very debilitating to the interest and input of a new practice. Then the danger is the material can never be explored properly, never liberated from the
oppression of struggle. To enjoy practice one has to initially cultivate a self
guiding momentum to stop it becoming random "one offs" all the time. As it's only once a month there is no reason not to make time for it if you have
the interest.
2.Intuitive Body Learning, Body Memory and Intelligence in Practice is not a skill that is cultivated at all in the western mindset. Generally
we are encouraged to depend on a lot of props to substitute the difficulty and confusion
involved in a profound learning process.
We skip the confusions, by reaching out lazily for our cassettes, recorders, cds, audio and visual technological aids. We mistake the delicate process of transference of the mental, intellectual mind to the body mind as "not remembering", seeing confusions as obstacles to learning. Rather, confusion and struggle are
completely essential to getting "knowledge of the heart".
It is the only process to making our training process experiential and knowledge permanent. It is at best a misguided belief to think any equipment is better than our own body memory, faculties and skills. You have to be prepared to tackle the material placed before you intelligently a bit at a time.
3. The Art of developing 
seriously challenges the ego, but it
also cultivates the hidden treasures of patience, insight, making the material yours, intelligence and independence in your experiences. It is a slow
burn interest in yourself that is devoid of the pressure of spiritual ambition. Underneath this way of learning lies the cultivation of sensitivity,
weight of the meditation mind and gravitas of the self. We become sincere students with ourselves.
4. Coming to Meet
is another important aspect to cultivate in this learning process
of life through practice. Meeting anything half way requires our sincere search to find and meet material/teachers/jobs/life half way. If we expect to
have it all given to us or be pursuaded into it then we are not ready to cultivate. Meeting our bit half way tones us, gives us interest, makes it our
journey and uniquely our experience. To develop a practice we have to first develop a self sustainability in our interest and motivation through all ups
and downs. In this way we develop another inner treasure; Our practice takes root.
We do not need to "do" anything.
All we need to be is present with ourselves and
I love the beginners journey this way. It is such a good chance to develop the foundations properly with this innocence (Wu Wang). It is so much harder
later in practice if we do not take the time now to approach training with the correct mind. Later in a sense we know too much and the ego can become very entrenched and resistant to going back
to fill the pits.
Advanced Class London
Open only at invitation of teacher
Twice monthly Monday
The London advanced group is a body of students who have been cultivating their practice over a significant time. These students have been practising together for years and have developed a very profound practice relationship and environment founded on sustained study, meditation and cultivation together. It is not an atmosphere to be disturbed, which is why the class is closed door. It is to allow these students to study and mature undisturbed. Advanced students are on a journey of integrating all aspects of the Lotus Tree curriculum, although each student has their particular field of interest. There are various aspects that define an advancing practice one of which is Gung.
"Gung" Practice/Work Consciousness. Stamina of Mind and Body
Gung is the fruit of
long term duration in practice.
It is a developing mind that can stay in attention, duration and meditation through class and beyond. It is also a certain cultivation of stillness
where restlessness has dissolved as well as significant development of physical stamina. The journey is to meditate holding forms for a longer and
longer period of time as well a personal cultivation, familiarity and intelligence in Qi Gong Forms, Nei Gong Meditations and Inner Alchemy Processes.
In this class students start to dissolve the boundaries and separations of the various courses in the curriculum and begin to put together an
integrated experience in practice. To do this you need a strong body (Cauldron) The advancing students have in this class the space they need to
deepen and move forward in their work by taking less instruction and more self guidance and silent repetition to deepen experiences.
3 Day Beltane May Retreat
Hampshire Meon Valley
Open to All Lotus Tree students
We have our extremely popular
3 day Beltane Mayday retreat at our wonderful centre Park Place in Wickam, on the edge of the Meon Valley South Downs in Hampshire. Park Place Pastoral Centre is our established retreat place. It is a chance to welcome the start of the summer season with a residential 3 day course that
encompasses all aspects of practice: Morning meditation, Qi Gong, Nei Gong Meditations, Outdoor walks in the fresh air and summer light of the breathtaking South Downs, Tree practice in the Beech Woods, glorious 5 Direction work in vast open spaces, Text study, free time, fun, laughter, silent periods, times together and time for yourself.
Simplicity and Stillness
The aim of this retreat
is to help you enter state of stillness, simplicity, sensitivity and
relaxation to cultivate your practice. These certain states of being remind us what lies naturally beneath the noise, activity and
stresses of everyday life. It is very easy to access our inner retreat space as a permanent state once we have an experience of it in the outer retreat.
Retreats can really help strengthen and open our access to our source, personified in Taoist texts as the water well. We carry around our potential
latently inside ourselves, but we forget our well and forget to go to it to pull up the water in the distractions in our lives. It helps to learn how to attune to its presence in a way that allows us to lead a full
life fulfilling all our duties in the outside world without being in opposition with our inner space. Retreats can help bring to the surface the true
source that is the fuel of our lives, not a choice of either or!
"My well is cleaned but no-one drinks from it. This is my heart's sorrow, for one might draw from it. If the king were clear minded, good fortune might be enjoyed in common." I Ching Hexagram 48. Ching/The Well
Environment
Much attention is given to the environment and what you need to help you let go of inner tension for the duration of the 3 days. All are provided with a small single room (usually with ensuite toilet and shower) functional and private to help you have a space that you can rely on as yours. I happen to strongly believe that privacy is really necessary to be able to mix together well and to relax and it has taken a long time to find a centre that so understand this in the way they provide these beautiful small single rooms. The food is again nourishing, home cooked, simple and wholesome.
The Centre and the work of the Franciscan Sisters.
The centre is a large heritage mansion with gardens, practice rooms of varying sizes, lounges, a lovely chapel space for those who wish it and adjacent rolling fields in the picturesque village of Wickham. What makes this centre special are the Franciscan nuns from South India who run the place as their life work. The sisters are encouraging of all faiths, practices and cultivations as part of the whole cultivating good for all and the Planet. When I talked about this noticeable cultivation of tolerance and openness, a senior sister suggested it could also be cultural, in the sense that the vast continent of India holds such a rich diversity of spiritual practices and traditions to grow up in, Buddhism, Hinduism, Muslim and Christian faiths.
The Sisters encourage all to come and run their classes there, from painters to writers, Yoga groups to Taoist practitioners and business conferences to local activities. All money is divided between the upkeep of the centre as well as distributed to provide education, support, centres and workers for the poorest most underprivileged citizens of the world in some of the most poverty stricken parts of the globe. This is the work of the sisters, who take no payment for themselves, just distribute all money back out as it comes in, helping the blind build schools in South America and Africa, educating and helping the underprivileged, disabled and neglected to find sustainable lives and skills.
They also have strong personal "live" cultivation
which is clearly self evident to any practitioner and are always
a joy to be around for a good discussion on practice!. Their mindfulness in the way they provide for us is a testament to life practice as spiritual
practice. I personally find them warm, humorous, individual, playful, tolerant and accommodating, but also with the strong personal discipline,
clarity and gravitas of adepts. Our group is getting to really appreciate them in our lives. We are joyful to meet them every year. I really value
the developing relationship between the Lotus Tree and the Sisters at Park Place who seem to understand my aims so well and I would encourage all to
hire the centre, for retreats, conferences, holidays, classes. You can do a day, or overnight stays and it is perfectly placed for walking the Meon
Valley which has recently been extended in the this area as part of the South Downs National Park.
Text Study . The I Ching
Life Practice class
Once a month Mondays in London
Available to intermediate and advanced Lotus Tree Qi Gong students
In this class we study life practice through the text of the I Ching and the 64 Hexagrams. Ideas written above such as the art of duration, the states of developing, the importance of beginners' minds, coming to meet and the marriage of ease and discipline are all studies taken from the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching, which explore and strategise the flow of energy in life. If one knows how to recognise these patterns that emerge in daily life, we can examine the tides and ebbs of our emotional patterns, learn the seeds of what sets up these patterns and recalibrate them to an easier life in harmony.
Students of I Ching are encouraged to take these ideas to shape their practices and to explore them in life circumstances as a valid part of spiritual
life. There are never more opportunities than in the flux of everyday life to give us the microscope to really explore ourselves in an engaged way
rather than in a mechanistic intellectual disengaged way. It is the journey of the Alchemist, to set up a method and check whether it facilitates
change. The I Ching is not empty philosophy to read. It is a practice book and only comes alive when we use the book in a relevant and present way in
our lives. We learn through I Ching studies how to trust the power of insight and how to develop an awareness and consciousness about ourselves that
is interesting and expressive rather than a constant effort at spiritual vigilance and policing the Self. The I Ching suggests that we don't need to
acquire a body of knowledge to realise our potential, in fact the journey suggests we keep shedding the unnecessary till we return to our natural
selves. That is all we need to realise our potential.
Thanks
Many thanks to all the people, organisations, friends and supporters of the Lotus Tree who have been so instrumental in it's growth. Help and support
have come in so many big and tiny ways but all have been essential, skilful and truly useful. I would like to include in that Pauline Groman at
Violet Hill Studios the centre of the Lotus Tree home for the last 10 years,
Sifu Myles Dunlop at Hung Leng Kuen Kung Fu (Fareham), Keith Sargeant at our new Hampshire venue
at Fareham Methodist Church to the Sisters
at Park Place Pastoral Centre and
ZM Designs for the design and maintenance of this website.
Nilima Raichoudhury.