Customer Reviews

The Yin of Tai-Chi: Tao, Tai-Chi & The Mysterious Female

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A most amazing and challenging book. I learned a lot about love and life. Here's a little excerpt:

"The Dalai Lama, the Buddha and Mahatma Ghandi are examples of those who profess Yang love. They love all human beings, everyone who exists, because we are all children of the Spiritual Force. They love each human being because each is a human being. They love Lucy because she is a human being, not because Lucy is Lucy. They love Tom because he is a human being, not because he is Tom. They do not have to know Tom or Lucy in order to love them. They love their human beingness. Yang love is a necessity, otherwise we would be cut off in our isolated little groups of families and friends. We owe much to such exponents of Yang love as Gandhi, the Dalai Lama and the Buddha.
But, there is another love, Yin or female love. This love is a love of the mother for her children. It is face to face, soul to soul, body to body, heart to heart. In Yin love, I love Lucy because she is Lucy. I know her dreams, her visions, the pain she has suffered, her strengths, her weaknesses and the beauty of her individual soul. A mother does not love her child because it is a human being but because it is her child. And it is this type of love that binds us to the here and now."

This book is a total joy!

Lash's book is helping me make sense of many ideas, frustrations and unhealed wounds that have collected over the years. This book absolutely applies to Tai Chi, and the reality of the subjective Chi experience, but also places everyday social and political encounters and challenges in a new perspective. Certainly worth picking up by anyone who's felt drawn to the Dao.

I do wish Lash has spent a bit more time integrating the martial aspects of Tai Chi with the other ideas collected here. (This may be discussed in The Spirit of Tai Chi, which I've not read yet.)

Being a woman I am sensitive to the ways that Yin is described. Too often it is about negative energy and darkness. This book discusses Yin as potential and a necessary and equal aspect of balance. With that in mind we can come to understand the ebb and flow of chi as we practice Tai Chi. We can think of Yang energy as water that can't be contained or directed without the cup that is Yin.