Roots & Branches 5 Element Qigong ™ - Tai Chi Foundation Inc.

Roots & Branches 5 Element Qigong™ is energetic and healing as it condenses tai chi into standing postures, walks and shifting movements. By integrating principle, breath, and focus in the “dantian” with awareness of the Chinese Five Elements, this work generates, circulates and unblocks “qi” (vital energy) allowing it to nourish us at the deepest level. This work is valuable for tai chi students at all levels, including complete beginners, and those who don’t practice tai chi.

What You Will Learn
For the apprentice, teacher, or beginner, this DVD set will engage you in a total approach to Tai Chi by bringing together the Yang Style Tradition of Tai Chi and Classical 5 Element Chinese medicine, both of which are known to strengthen and heal the body, clarify the mind, and inspire the spirit. Water, wood, fire, earth, and metal form the cycles of life and health. Each element is clearly explained and demonstrated in inspiring natural environments by master teachers.

About Roots & Branches 5 Element Qigong™ & Our Contribution – By Pat Gorman

Roots & Branches 5 Element Qigong™ is both the simplest and deepest work in our tradition. Accessible to the athlete as well as the bedridden, to those who wish to study deeply, and those with no time at all. It can restore health and strength, emotional equilibrium, mental clarity, and spiritual awareness.

Originally, the moves and postures were given by Yang Cheng Fu to Professor Cheng Man-Ch’ing to cure Professor’s tuberculosis. In turn, Professor carefully chose healing postures for his own patients.

Although Professor understood the power of this work, he felt it could only be transmitted by Chinese medical practitioners with twenty or more years of work with yin yang and the five elements.

Patrick Watson was initiated into this work when Professor gave him postures and movements for his health. Patrick decided we should preserve this work and asked that I interview everyone Professor had worked with in this way: their illness, Chinese diagnosis, assigned work, and results. I began note-taking in 1976, gathering a lot of information, and began, with Patrick and then on my own, assigning postures to my patients up to the current time, turning knowledge into wisdom. All legacy holders of the Tai Chi Foundation are responsible for keeping the jewel of Tai Chi relevant and accessible as we move through generations. Patrick began this work with all of us through the holding work, and it deepened and strengthened our Tai Chi. He also encouraged many of us to study five element acupuncture with Worsley so we would someday be ready to teach his work.

Around 1984 when I was treating my first patients, he said, “You can teach this when you understand it completely—as Tai Chi, the elements, yin and yang, and as a practitioner. Then you’ll be ready. It’s going to take you at least 20 years. And then the world’s going to need it.”

It was a daunting statement. I kept detailed notes, organized them, assigned postures to my patients, as Gerrie Sporken was simultaneously doing in Europe. By 2004, I’d been practicing for 20 years, and it became clear that the world was again changing, speeding up, requiring flexibility. It was harder for people to attend a 30-plus hour Tai Chi training. I put together my notes and contacted Gerrie Sporken. We began to put forth this work, formerly only for patients, together for everyone, since everyone needs healing at this time of ecological and spiritual crisis.

From a historical point of view, each Legacy Holder of the Tai Chi Foundation (TCF) must keep Tai Chi relevant and accessible in their era as a tool for humanity. For purposes of health and consciousness needed in the world, Professor completely remade the form, shortening it into the series of five element cycles. Patrick developed “The Eight Ways,” with Professor’s input, “The Children’s Games,” he established levels of experience and set up apprenticeships to pass Tai Chi to the world through many teachers of high quality.

Roots & Branches is one of the major contributions that the TCF Legacy Holders can make to the world today. Patrick himself wanted so much to do this that he began studying with Worsley to become a five element practitioner to complete Professor’s mandate, seeing this work as a marriage of Tai Chi and Medicine.

Pat Gorman, M.Ac., is the producer of the “Roots & Branches 5 Element Qi Gong™” DVD.

Introduction: Robert Abramson, M.D.
Written by Pat Gorman, M.Ac.
Directed by Karen Kohlhaas
Developed With Gerrie Sporken, Ac.M.

Thank you to our apprentices who appear on the DVD:
Jonathan Stow: Metal Element
Patrice Wooldridge: Fire Element
Charlie Chan: Water Element
Front Cover: Margaret Matsumoto: Embracing the Tao
Greg Woodson: Wood Element