Tai Chi Camp @Lonavala, 2020
January 12, 2024 2024-02-11 7:50Tai Chi Camp @Lonavala, 2020
UTCQ Most of us look forward to the Tai Chi camp because it means intensive training over one-and-a-half days, always something new learnt, and a chance to get to know a bit more about our fellow learners.
Feb 22nd, 23rd, 2020, did not disappoint.
We were introduced to the next level of whatever we had been doing at class and, as usual, the challenge tapped our slumbering potential. Grunts, groans and good-natured complaints notwithstanding.
But when your guru’s guru is part of the camp, the atmosphere is charged with awe, heightened expectation and some trepidation. Tall, straight, spare and angular with penetrating eyes, John Lazarus Mascarenhas, Lazarus Sir to Rakesh, has been teaching martial arts for 45 years. He began learning at the age of 14 and his was the privilege of, literally, bashing Rakesh into shape. Not surprising that he trains commandos, police personnel as well as corporates in self-defence. Children and lay people as well. In spite of his stern exterior we realised he is sensitive and humble, willing to give intense personal attention to anyone who needed or sought help.
We were taken on a journey into the abstract side of Tai Chi and experienced, forcefully, the Yin and Yang of it.
His sessions were sprinkled with stories from his personal and professional life and, somehow, all radiated from a point that he had in mind and returned to imprint that in ours.
The appropriate use of language, bodily and verbal, the breaking of social, mental and emotional conditioning for self-growth and the need to acquire a strong will to make the required changes were brought home in the most irregular manner. Never was a Tai Chi class so abstract.
Volunteers, willing or inducted, became the subject of the grilling. Hats off to Anuradha, Kanchan, Kiran, Preeti, Narayan and Sanjay, who were the grain between the relentless grinding stones. दो पाटों के बीच, साबित बचा न कोई … observers included. One immediate, significant outcome was that Gerry shared how, in his life, he had managed to succeed only because he had made Fear his friend.
This was not all. The abstract combined with the physical and we were encouraged to attempt new, but better controlled movement, the need to focus within, on our own pace, and not use our peripheral vision to imitate the pace of others around us. Singing by our friends was the music we danced to and Rakesh ‘conducted’ us through a Form.
This camp will stand out in memory and I think I can say that some good accrued to all.
Thank you Lazarus Sir! Thank you Rakesh.
