Tai Chi Arts

Polyrizos Hotel, Crete, Greece

Sun July 4th to Sun July 25th 2010

YEAR OF BREATHING AND CHI

Bruce’s highly anticipated Longevity Breathing Instructor Training will be held on the island of Crete at the scenic Polyrizos Hotel. The beautiful Rodakino beach is set amid the mountains of the southern coast. Modern air-conditioned bungalows with private bathrooms, surrounded by shaded olive trees, are a minute’s walk from the clear blue waters of the Mediterranean. The merging of sea and mountains in this peaceful location makes it the ideal place to relax and transform its unique and dynamic energy into your practice of Taoist energy arts.

Doctors report that up to ninety percent of Americans (and apparently a similar percentage of Europeans) do not fully use their diaphragms while breathing. They take shallow breaths and only use a portion of the lungs, even when they believe they are taking deep breaths. This starves the body of one of its most important rejuvenators. Holding the breath is particularly common when people are angry, fearful, tense or highly focused. The nervous system may react to this with a stress response. Releasing stress can become difficult, so tension lodges in the body (such as in the shoulders, stomach or jaw) and cells. Over time, shallow breathing or holding the breath makes the body more sluggish so that physical and mental activities take progressively more energy and you age more rapidly.

Bruce will teach you Taoist whole-body breathing methods to reverse this process and help you gently massage your internal organs and breathe into the upper part of your lungs, which is responsible for energizing the brain. Bruce developed his Longevity Breathing program from ancient Taoist techniques because he believes that if there were only one practice he could teach Westerners to master, it would be how to breathe well. This alone will dramatically improve the quality of your life. It is essential to healing, relaxation, concentration, rejuvenating sleep, athletics, qigong, martial arts (such as tai chi), graceful aging and spirituality. Although Bruce will teach breathing as sitting meditation, he will also incorporate practices into your qigong, bagua, tai chi or yoga forms. In order to fully actualize the benefits of whole-body breathing, you must maintain it both in your practice and in your daily life. Breathing well will have a positive effect on your stress levels, overall health and wellness, and physical, emotional and mental vitality.