Karinaland River

  Reflections on Teaching the Principles and Art of T’ai Chi Ch’uan   (Part 1)   For more than 40 years, I have been studying, practicing and teaching T’ai Chi Ch’uan (which is part of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Philosophy). I was trained to become a teacher the traditional way, was made assistant, and then years later sent off with permission and blessing to open my own school. After the initial resistance to becoming a teacher of T’ai Chi – since my twenties I have been teaching dance, theater, movement, voice & sounding, creative expression, and more – I recognized the enormous gift, and never let it go. Teaching forces us to deeply inquire in order to transmit. T’ai Chi became my main nourishment and compass, it was life-altering, and truly life-saving in my case. My approach to teaching kept growing and deepening with me over the decades. How can we integrate the principles into our approach to life, work, art, people, to anything? When in good alignment, strong below an

  Happy Lunar New Year of the Water Rabbit All year long I follow the moon cycles of full & empty – rising and ebbing – marking and celebrating full moon & new moon. The ocean, plant world and our menstrual cycles and bodies are naturally in tune with these lunar cycles. And for children the power of the moon is undeniable. The white light of the full moon would put me under a spell hard to break. But getting older my favorite has become the New Moon – the darkness with its promise of new beginnings, visions and possibilities.   On Sunday,   January 22, the Lunar New Year (or Spring Festival) started with the new moon. Two weeks of festivities are being celebrated by many different Asian cultures & communities in America and around the world. I personally am not into fortune telling, but I enjoy exploring playfully what we are offered with the  Water Rabbit  in the coming year. In this case, twice a yin quality, soft & malleable, and yet capable of thorough and intellig

All Things have a Soul – Papa’s Hobel     This old hand tool – Papa’s plane – is a memento of my father, one of the very few things I took with me over the ocean after his death at age 67. It sits on the low bench of my big living room window. Very alive, ready to create, beautify, be useful. Lastingly solid and at the same time soft – its sculptural quality emanates my father’s soul.      I was 40 years old, pierced by his early leaving, my grief was immeasurable back then. The continent of my upbringing and that of my life in America so far apart. Now I am two years past his life span. It all feels like one huge gift. Life, his legacy, my heritage, the “tools” I was gifted. To invoke wood grain, I pulled out  René  Magritte’s oil painting  D é couverte  from 1928 –  meaning  discovery  – here the unseen beneath the surface is exposed…     American planes are made of metal, in old Germany these tools were made of wood – a sharp metal blade inserted and held in place with a wooden wedg

  Awe – Wonder – Joy   For me each new year begins with the Lunar New Year, so January is a month of waiting and preparation. All beings are still in their root queendom, gestating and dreaming up new qualities to bring into the new yearly cycle. Waiting to rise from the dark imagination of earth. Waiting to come to light. I cherish this listening into winter’s silence, starkness and simplicity. All is stripped, unadorned, sparse, empty, skeletal – invoking awe, wonder, and joy – revealing essence. Even the storms allow us to touch into elemental and awe-some truths.   Of course, here in California, already buds are starting to erupt into bloom: Magnolia trees, narcissus, and my hellebore. At the same time wind, rain, snow, hail, lightning and thunder are pounding and challenging us this year. We humans are truly tiny and helpless in the face of atmospheric rivers and bomb cyclones. Water and earth assert their potent powers through flooding and mudslides. These elements are just obeyi