Personal Sessions:

Learn with David at a time and place to suit you. You can book single sessions or obtain a discount for a block of 5. Simply call or email.

Group Sessions:

Starting in January 2010 near Portishead, Bristol
(I am currently selecting locations and times. Please feel free to contact me with your preferences, the feedback helps me offer the best service for you.)

Tai Chi for beginners. A thoughtful, practical and gentle introduction to Tai Chi.

Awakening The Artist. Practical Movement work to help you (re)discover joy in life. Beginners very welcome.

About Tai Chi

T’ai-Chi Ch’uan or "The Ultimate and Supreme Form of Boxing" is a physical philosophy encompassing healing, meditation and self-defence. It is also a moving meditation that cultivates a calm mind and a relaxed everyday awareness. It helps the practitioner to be awake and attentive to living life in the present and to let go of worry, constant planning and gnawing fears.

In T’ai-Chi the movements are practised slowly bringing attention to the posture, breath. By softening the body through releasing tension in the muscles and joints, T’ai-Chi helps restore the natural self-healing systems that are often suppressed by stiffness and muscle tightness which can have built up over many years of physical, emotional and mental habits.

Regular practice

• helps the mind to become calmer and clearer.
• helps to relax aching muscles and joints, boost the immune system, strengthen the legs and back, reduce blood pressure and generally improve health; both physical and mental.
• helps to maintain bone density; this is very beneficial for people who have osteoporosis.
• Its movements help to massage the internal organs. This is very helpful in aiding digestive conditions and keeping the other organs of the body healthy.
• improves balance.Several NHS hospitals now use T’ai-Chi to help patients recover from strokes where their balance and co-ordination have been impaired.

T’ai-Chi is a generic name for many different streams of work. Its study has many types of practices, the most well known being ‘The Form’. The beginner usually learns a short form that can take from thirty weeks to two years to learn. The form I study and teach is The Yang Style Short Form and comes to us through the Yang family lineage brought to the west by the Chinese T’ai-Chi master, Cheng Man Ching.

Ultimately T’ai-Chi works with the mind. It said that the first blow is never made as the experienced practitioner anticipates this and can deflect the attack before the opponent has time to strike. My teacher told us that until we knew what we were doing we were to keep out of the way. When we know what we are doing we won’t need it.

About Meditation in Movement:

A wonderful way to connect to our deepest joyful and creative instincts. Using free form movements within a safe, structured context, it becomes possible to drop our internal censor and discover that we bring delight to ourselves and others. Be prepared to leave the session hungry for more.

The work itself comes from study I did under Sue Weston (www.relaxingthemind.com) who herself was a dancer, choreographer, and a teacher of Movement to actors and actresses. The work is best done in a group of participants, where each person is able to explore their creativity whilst respecting their own physical limitations on the day. As well as adding to the energy of the event, working in a group provides a respectful witness to your self expression, which in itself can be life changing. We are all beginners in this limitless joyful work.

A Joined-Up Approach :

I come from a background of disciplines involving the mind as well as the body and spirit. I find being aware of how people can trap themselves in damaging paradigms connects to the movement work I do. Thus, when appropriate, I can offer alternate ways of understanding the world to augment the personal growth which comes from the Movement work. I only offer hypnosis explicitly and by prior agreement.