Originally written by: Dina Kerr
After 7 years of Maple Ridge workshops once a month, it never gets old. Each workshop is new and exciting. Its like meeting my family, brothers and sisters that I haven not seen for a while. There is joking and laughter intermingled with pushing and shoving, then in comes Daddy Chen, we must behave now.
When the teaching starts everyone takes a more serious tone, the notebooks and pencils are handy for the bits of wisdom that we have already written down before but not quite understood. The forms are hard work, but as you repeat them you find your focus in each move sometimes in one part of your body, sometimes in another and you try to discern what would be correct if there was an opponent. The concentration puts you momentarily in a world of your own. The teaching continues, forms, circles, sparring, and the strange part is that although you have done it many times before it is always new. After 7 years, I know I have improved but I am still hungry to learn more because I am aware I have only a small percentage of what there is. It is ART and Master Chen is the ARTIST. He peels the layers off the onion one at a time in a clear, concise and scientific way. First you understand, then the work is only beginning as you try to put his teachings into your practice. I must mention the health point of view, because it is big for me personally.
At 57 years of age I had cancer and arthritis, at 72 I am healthy, strong and the arthritis comes only if I do not practice.
