CHA DAO TEA SESSIONS | The Art of Drinking Tea and Conversation

As a practice, Cha Dao or ‘The Way of Tea’ is one path to cultivating a clear mind, an open heart, and a still soul.  Drinking tea has long been a part of a contemplative lifestyle and is relevant today as we navigate ways to care for ourselves in our modern lives.  Cha Dao is a centuries-old meditative practice that teaches students to turn the pleasurable routine of brewing and drinking tea into a ritual steeped in quiet intention.  The lessons learned from tea’s cultivation, preparation, and sharing offer us much more than a beverage. The practice of tea encompasses:

• living in harmony with nature

• recognizing and appreciating beauty simple things

• clarity of mind, presence, and action

• building empathetic communities

Join us at Trinity in the practice of cha dao.  We will experience the profound synergy between drinking tea and mindfulness.  Each Cha Dao Tea Session will include a meditation practice and an intentional teaching based on the wisdom of East Asian traditions.

Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE)

Information and Free Group Sessions

Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) are a series of exercises that assist the body in releasing deep muscular patterns of stress, tension, and trauma. Dr. David Berceli developed TRE in the late 1980s while researching how trauma occurs in the human organism. Regardless of how trauma is experiences, trauma expresses itself in the body. Those experiences are stored in the body until they find a way to be released. Most exercises are designed to release surface level tension. TRE, although simple and painless, are specifically designed to release the deep chronic muscular contractions created by trauma. TRE employs the natural mechanisms of the body to dissolve chronic tension.

If you are interested in one of the group sessions, please click on the button to save your place. We will contact you to confirm and to give you a little more information about the session.

LIVING WITH THE SEASONS WORKSHOPS

Ayurvedic Nutrition for the winter season

January 30 2:00 -4:00 pm

Learn More

Boost Immunity during the Winter Season with Classical Chinese Herbal Formulas

February 20 2:00 - 4:00 pm

NORTH AMERICAN TANG SHOU TAO ASSOCIATION

northwest regional spring retreat

with cascadia gong fu club

May 26 - 28, 2023

at The Troutlake Abbey

Troutlake, WA

For over 30 years, the North American Tang Shou Tao Association (NATSTA) has worked tirelessly to keep alive treasures of the past for practitioners of the future.

Our mission is the preservation, research and dissemination of traditional martial and medical arts with a focus on Chinese gongfu and Chinese medicine. We are dedicated to the purity of the methods, intent, expression and spirit inherent to each system and lineage that we represent, and to ensure the cultivation of the truths of these arts through future generations.

• NATSTA strives to inspire its members to embody a lifelong practice and love of traditional physical culture.

• We offer focused, rigorous, and developmental opportunities for our members to train, research and grow as individuals and as a cultural community through conferences, retreats, seminars and research trips.

• We are a cohesive network of instructors, practitioners and students working to develop our skills of bagua zhang, xingyi quan, taiji quan, liuhebafa, kajukenbo, eskrima, qigong, Jin Shou TuinaTM, acupuncture, herbal medicine, craniosacral therapy and Thai massage.

• The North American Tang Shou Tao Association Cooperative, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

TRAINING METHOD

The North American Tang Shou Tao schools all share a common training philosophy that can be summed up with the idea that our ancestors deserve our utmost respect and that any changes to the way they taught how to do things cannot be made easily or lightly. While we acknowledge the need for an art to evolve and grow in order to stay vibrant and connected to the communities in which we live, we strongly believe that the wisdom handed down by our past teachers is largely timeless and should be preserved as a priority.

Our method is based on the wisdom of older generation boxers that was collected by Vince Black over the course of his decades of research and formulated by him into the current Tang Shou Tao curricula. Training sessions generally follow a similar pattern divided into three parts. This format is highly adaptable according to the needs and desires of the instructor leading the workout.

The training begins with an exercise set, of which there are a number to choose from, depending on the art and the students. These sets are all forms of neigong which range from very intense to moderately intense and are designed to prepare the student for some aspect of training internal boxing skills.

Forms are practiced after the neigong exercise sets. In the association’s curriculum there are a wide variety of forms, both empty hand routines and weapon routines, with an equally wide variety of purposes and intent. The forms teach movement and breathing patterns, reflex and dexterity skills. They act as a catalogue or archive of techniques and applications. They can be used as physiotherapy in the conventional sense. They often act in very specific ways on the physiology of the practitioner in accordance with the tenants of Chinese medicine and, thus, behave as a method of medicine. Some forms cross the line into moving meditation and bring all the challenges and benefits associated with any form of mindfulness.

Finally, two person drills and applications are practiced. These can range from very gentle sensitivity drills to violent self-defense applications. There is a stress put on reactive and reciprocal drills that teach evasion and counter striking and test the correctness of the forms. There is often some form of free play at the end of class.

To be properly effective, training sessions should be three hours long with a clear ratio of 80% of time spent on exercises and forms and 20% of time spent on application. This is the formula that has been handed down to us. There is much room for adaptation to specific circumstances, but this is the template.

SHEN LONG XING YI QUAN

Shen Long Xingyi Quan is a unique style of xingyi. While its five phases (also translated from Mandarin as the five elements) and twelve animal forms are recognizable when compared to orthodox styles, the Shen Long system is distinguished by its heavy influence from Gao Bagua, emphasis on martial realism and the non-xingyi foundational aspects of its curriculum.

The Shen Long system of martial arts is a complete method of physical culture. The core of the system is an eclectic xingyi curriculum that includes all of the classic components that xingyi

is known for. Here we find the practice of the wuxing, Wuxing Lianhuan, bashi, the twelve animals, Za Shi Shui and An Shen Pao, along with San Shou and weapons forms. However, the system has been elaborated over the past seventy years by several generations of masters as it was brought first from northern China to Taiwan and then to North America.

The teachers in our lineage each responded to the challenges and opportunities they faced and gathered material to improve the system. Zhang Junfang in Tianjin was among the first generation that benefited from being taught xingyi and bagua simultaneously. The influence of this cross training can easily be seen in the Shen Long expression of the five elements and the twelve animals, many of which are unique to the Shen Long system.

In Taiwan, first Hung Yishang then Hsu Hong-Chi adapted the method to be able to effectively teach in a modern urban setting. Exercises were adopted from many sources like Southern White Crane, judo, aikido, and Chinese opera, and used to prepare the student’s body and were taught in incremental steps. Basic forms, some inspired by Gao Bagua post heaven linear methods and some from various shaolin schools, were incorporated to give students a broad foundation in boxing styles, methods and techniques.

Finally, when Vince Black began teaching students in America, he organized the material from Taiwan into distinct exercise sets in three levels, added material gleaned from his own extensive research, and created many of the two person drills that form an important part of the system.

Each of these teachers very carefully, thoughtfully and respectfully added to the system they had received and were able to improve on the teaching method while not polluting and degrading the original transmission. The result is a very complete method of physical culture with a wide breadth of training techniques and styles that are incredibly sophisticated and modern while remaining completely rooted in traditional thinking and mindset.

SAN MIGUEL ESKRIMA

The Doce Pares Eskrima Club in Cebu, Philippines is world famous. One of its founders, Filemon ”Momoy” Cañete, called his personal expression of the stick and knife method of the Doce Pares Club, San Miguel Eskrima. This is an old school dueling art tracing its roots directly to the Spanish fencing of a previous age. The techniques translate well into self-defense but the core of the system is focused on the strict requirements of surviving a duel with a stick and knife or sword and knife.

Vince Black learned San Miguel Eskrima directly from Momoy Cañete. The flowing angles and whip-like power of San Miguel cross trains well with internal martial arts and Vince appreciated the rigor and utility of the method in which the deadly nature of the knife had to be respected first and foremost. He was also very impressed with the moral uprightness of Momoy himself and never tired of repeating stories about the lessons he watched Momoy administering to his students in the Philippines.

The association’s San Miguel method consists of extensive form and footwork drills that teach stick-handling skills, movement patterns and mechanics, a set of counters to the twelve stick angles that instill the all-important distancing or ”measure” and another extensive set of two-person drills that teach the range of dynamic possibilities inherent in the stick and knife game.

Momoy spent a lifetime developing and refining this art and we owe a deep debt of gratitude to him for sharing it so openly. By all accounts, Momoy was a man of culture devoted to his family, to his faith, to helping others, to music and to his art. His is an example worthy of following.

A large repertoire of forms, footwork drills, stick handling exercises and two-person drills allow all aspects of the tactics and the problem solving of a stick and knife duel to be studied; the angles, the basic counters, evasion with footwork, moving into range and disarms or grappling.

The skills developed lead to the game of San Miguel, played through the medium of three sets of drills that open the way to a method-free sparring with stick and knife. Palusots means free sparring with out stabbing, Espada Y Daga means stick and knife or the patterns of give and take with stick and knife, and Serra Todo means total locks, that record the endgame.

RETREAT SCHEDULE

FRIDAY

• 4:00 Afternoon check-in

• 6:00 – 7:00 Dinner

• 7:30 – 9:30 Training

SATURDAY

• 7:00 Qi Gong

• 8:00 Breakfast

• 9:00 – 12:00 Training Session

• 12:00 Lunch

• 1:00 - 4:00 Training Session

• 4:00 – 6:00 Dinner

• 7:00 – 9:00 Medicine

SUNDAY

• 7:00 Qi Gong

• 8:00 Breakfast

• 9:00 – 12:00 Training Session

• 12:00 Lunch

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Registration

• Cost for the retreat is $150 . This includes meals. This does not include accommodations.

• When registering, click the “Registration & Accommodations” button. Add the REGISTRATION item & your ACCOMMODATION choice to your cart.

• Payment plans are available by request.

Accommodations

• Prices vary - choose an option that is best for you!

• Click the “Registration & Accommodations” button to view the choices.

Cancellation policy

• Payment is refundable up until April 27, 2023.

• No refunds available for cancellations less than 20 days before the retreat.

Registration - each option will take you to the registration

• visit https://www.trinitybodyarts.org/nw-natsta-spring-retreat