Craig and Kai Visit the Retreat Center

Last week our friend Craig (documentary) and Rii’s (documentary) son Kai stopped by for a few days. This was the first time we got to meet Kai, it was fun hanging out with him. He brought his skateboard which was a great time. I used to love to skate back when I was in grade school all the way through high school. When I hopped onto Kai’s board it took a little time and a few falls to get the feeling back. But once I got used to it, I landed some of my old tricks…kick flips, heel flips and even a 360 kick flip. It was quite a rush and brought back old memories. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to skate that much as we had business to take care of.

The main purpose for Craig’s visit was to get more footage for the documentary and also to shoot the first of our upcoming online instructional video series demonstrating taijiquan applications. We spent 2 days shooting. The first day Patrick and I got filmed demonstrating applications using coiling from the opening movement of the Taijiquan form. The next day it was Ricardo and Jon performing “Grasp Sparrows Tail Right.” We had to both demonstrate and explain the movements step by step. To be honest, this first video shoot I was a little nervous at first…I think we all were. But after about a half hour I felt more comfortable and it ended up being fun and a great learning experience. Our purpose for making these online videos is to educate the public as to the many applications within the Taiji form, to get experience instructing and developing training/educational material, and also to raise awareness of the Retreat Center project. I’ll keep everybody posted as to their release dates.