In a previous article I described a standing meditation technique taken from Taijiquan (Tai Chi*). For a powerful change of state it can work pretty well, and it’s pretty good for leg strength and body awareness.
I want to situate the standing technique in a broader landscape of meditation methods and motivations. I’ll explain through my own story, which is perhaps a peculiar, though I’ll bet there are elements many will recognise.
I fell into meditative practice as a pre-adolescent. I had one of those intensely close friendships perhaps unique to that age. The friendship was based on shared insecurity and fascination for certain classically boyish things. One of those things was martial arts, not so much in a structured and trained way, but the idea of martial arts, and the more exotic the better.
Saturday often meant a trip to Atoz Martial arts in Gerard Street¹, London. We were cheerfully embarrassed when the owner overhead us pronounce the name as attoz. He laughed and told us the shop was called “A-to-Z martial arts”, which was disappointingly mundane to us.
This was where Steve and I bought our first nunchaku (long gone now, along with inevitable head bruises that came with them) and martial arts books. I discovered Ninjutsu in the first book that I bought. This was about as exotic as martial arts came around 1980…
