Reprinted from “The Heart of the Mountain”
By Marc Andonian, Ph.D.
As a special birthday present to myself, I decided to enroll in a weekend taijiquan “intensive” led by Scott Rodell of the Great River Taoist Center in Washington D.C. Bede Bidlack, director of the Still Mountain T’ai Chi Center in Ardmore, PA and one of Rodell’s students, arranged the twelve-hour weekend workshop held at the Max Family Training Center in Ardmore, PA on March 1-3.
A beginning student at Still Mountain T’ai Chi Center, I hoped to reinforce the learnings from my ten week introduction to Michuan Taijiquan — the “hidden teaching” of the Yang Family Taijiquan form developed by Yang Luchan. During the weekend, twelve students — half of whom came up from the Capital Beltway — were treated to history, instruction, demonstrations, and form practice led by Scott M. Rodell and assisted by Bede Bidlack. With the rest of our students, I eagerly engaged in our practice – and was called on for one of the first demonstrations. “Great,” I thought, “perhaps I have actually begun to get the hang of this stuff.”
Scott began to talk about the importance of alignment – feet parallel, knees over the toes, coccyx down, back straight, head up as if suspended from the ceiling – and how even the slightest misalignment invalidates your best efforts. I assumed my best stance for the demonstration. Scott placed two fingers on the crest of my hip and pushed with about two ounces of pressure — I toppled over like a house of cards! Okay, so I have a few things to learn from Mr. Rodell.
Once the flush of my embarrassment passed, Mr. Rodell asked me to reassume my best position and said: “Now let’s fix you up.” He gave a little adjustment to one foot, then nudged each knee outward by a half-inch. With a bear hug from the back, he guided me to an appropriate posture. Feeling a bit like a Gumby toy, each minor adjustment made me feel heavier in the feet, like I was being nailed or cemented into the ground. Mr. Rodell then leaned his full weight against my body, and I did not move. All of the energy, the force of his body, flowed down through my feet and into the ground. Simply amazing! There was more to this internal martial art than met the eye.
Parallels to life situations abounded, and it became clear that taiji was not just a series of graceful movements and exercises, but an internal martial art to be learned and practiced as a lifelong discipline. It is also became clear that this is learned best from a genuine teacher, or “Laoshir” (literally “old teacher”), who guides and develops students or disciples. As my respect and appreciation grew, Mr. Rodell became Rodell Laoshir and I was content to be his student for the weekend.
Over the next few days, we continued our journey of learning the importance of mastering the fundamentals and building pieces of the form, one move at a time. Rodell Laoshir presented each move of the form with basic martial applications to help us link form with function. Between workshop sessions, we broke bread together at several local restaurants. We were joined for dinner by former students of Rodell Laoshir’s and got to know one another as members of a growing taijiquan community. After dinner on Saturday night, a number of the students and friends gathered at the Still Mountain T’ai Chi Center where we listened to interesting stories of Rodell Laoshir’s travels and teaching in Estonia and Russia.
As the weekend came to a close, I found myself uniquely energized – the opposite of the exhaustion I had anticipated. I look forward to continuing my studies with my own teacher, Bidlack Laoshì at Still Mountain Tai Chi Center and Max Family Training Center, and for the continued opportunity to study with my grand teacher, Rodell Laoshì at Great River Taoist Center.
To each, I say Xiexie Laoshir (Thank You, Teacher) for the wonderful birthday present!