Al Simon – The Tai Chi and Qigong Blog

In addition to being a ChiFusion Tai Chi student, Richard P. Alleger is also a woodcarver. Richard, who lives in Pennsylvania, recently sent me a beautiful, hand-carved plaque with the Chinese characters for “Tai Chi Chuan”. And the wood for the characters comes from boards broken at a dojo!

Richard gave me his permission to share the nice letter he sent me along with the plaque:

Richard P. Alleger
rpcarver@msn.com
July 1,2011

Al Simon, ChiFusion:

I am enclosing this Tai Chi Chuan plaque that I made in appreciation for the ChiFusion course.

I got started with ChiFusion at the end of 2010 and am taking my time working through the program in part because of a family health crisis. I have completed the Eight Brocades and have seen immediate health benefits.

After doing Opening the Spine, I walk more erect and feel I regained my height. After doing the horse stance postures, I notice that I can sink lower in Yang Style Snake Creeps Down posture. I appreciate the direction to turn out the toes rather than keeping the feet parallel while doing horse stances. Weakness in my left knee had prevented me from lowering my stance without experiencing sharp pain. With this change, I have been able to achieve a low stance without discomfort.

I was happy to find ChiFusion because I have a life style that makes it hard to regularly attend a class. My job selling chemicals to Industrial and Food product companies requires me to travel through the Northeast and all of Canada. Weekends are a time to catch up on things around the house and spend time with the family.

I was in a group that started training every other Sunday with a Chinese teacher, then they agreed to start meeting every other Tuesday night, making it impossible for me to attend regularly. So I have been practicing on my own with a DVD the Chinese teacher made. The DVD is better than nothing, as long as I improve my copying of his movements and postures, but I wasn’t getting any help correcting mistakes.

ChiFusion gives me input both reading material and video on basic things to begin correcting mistakes. I like the feeling of learning again and setting a pace to work through the material. I believe daily practice is vitally important to overall improvement. I try to practice first thing in the morning.

My interest in Tai Chi led me into watching and collecting Chinese Martial Arts movies from Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest Studios. I have a small collection, only 530 movies. I got the idea to make these plaques after watching the movies and seeing similarly made signs in temple scenes. I have included a photo of me when I sold some plaques at a Chinese Martial arts competition in Baltimore awhile back. The Chinese characters on the plaque are cut out from boards broken in a Taekwondo dojo where I took some Chen Tai Chi lessons.

Thanks for creating a system for learning Qigong and Tai Chi in an independent setting

Sincerely,
Richard P. Alleger

If you are interested in getting one of Richard’s plaques, you can reach him by email at rpcarver@msn.com.