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Welcome to Our Voice 
Our Australia Dreaming 

Tribute to All Our Ancestors

- Australia Dreaming - 

Tribute to the Ancestors

Sun Style Tai Chi

 

Australia Dreaming Qigong 15 Form created by Master Trainer Elva Arthy over twenty years ago, links the concepts of Qigong and Tai Chi with movements from Sun Style Tai Chi using breathing and visualisation exercises aimed at health enhancement and relaxation. They are to be performed and shared in a manner highlighting our common humanity seeking peace and harmony using imagery and movements with fifteen different stories from the Australian landscape encouraging the visualising of Nature in a single day from First Light through to Sunset, then Dreamtime, paying tribute to ALL our ancestors. Australia Dreaming Qigong 15 Form is Elva’s own Dreaming for a better and harmonious world. By utilising imagery from the Australian landscape in Nature more familiar to most Australians thus enhances visualisation and movement being more accessible as distinct from Chinese cosmology, such as lotus flowers and snow rabbits as found in traditional Qigong forms. The invitation is also out there for all people from all cultures to be encouraged to create their own Dreaming of harmony and peace in NATURE utilising imagery from their own cultural landscape.

 

The first public performance of Australia Dreaming Qigong 15 Form was in June 2003 at Dr Paul Lam's International Tai Chi for Health workshop at Connecticut USA. The fact that Tai Chi and Qigong had an Australian context of nature which also respectfully referenced the First Australians had a powerful impact on all the participants, with the paradoxical realisation that Tai Chi and Qigong was not something exclusively Chinese owned but was something powerful that transcended cultural boundaries and belonged to the world, to common humanity. The fact that European white folk and a woman could engage in creating a Qigong set that was not driven by Taoist, Confucianist and Chinese imagery was something that blew the minds of those participating and especially those who were also interested in the genius of Sun Lutang, who in the 1930s liberated Tai Chi from the Chinese Confucian tradition of Tai Chi being a man-only-domain, from the “brotherhood of the boxers” not to be appropriated by women, and not by “gweilo” or foreigners. Every woman and every man in this world should be able to enjoy the beauty and power of nature through Tai Chi Qigong without the racist, misogynistic, and abusive claims of cultural appropriation.

 

In June 2008, Australia Dreaming: Tribute to the Ancestors Sun Style Tai Chi was specially published for the presentation of Elva’s Australia Dreaming Qigong 15 Form at Dr Lam’s Tai Chi for Health Workshop in South Hadley in Massachusetts where her Australia Dreaming Qigong 15 Form was again received with rapturous applause, breaking down the cultural prison of nonsensical claims of cultural appropriation from Confucian and Chinese imagery and ownership. This first edition of Australia Dreaming: Tribute to the Ancestors of Sun Style Tai Chi (2008) was based on articles previously presented at the First International Tai Chi for Health Conference on 4-6 December 2006, Seoul, Korea. The 2006 conference articles, Tim Cartmell’s endorsement of these articles and other articles subsequently written relevant to the teaching and practice of Tai Chi Qigong were included in later editions of the Australia Dreaming Tribute to Ancestors publication. Separate publications have also been produced in support of our Advanced Instructor Training Program for Tai Chi for Health - Australia Dreaming: Tai Chi for Health Advanced Instructor Training Course (2009) and Tai Chi Dreaming: A Scientific Study of Tai Chi for Health as Mind-Body Exercise for Health, Fitness & Wellbeing (2010).

When Elva first presented her Australia Dreaming Qigong 15 Form in 2003 in Connecticut USA, she had the “audacity to hope” that it would make it more accessible and acceptable to Aboriginal communities in Australia by including references to indigenous Australians as part of the cultural imagery of the Australian landscape. In particular, significant anthropological evidence that cultural concepts of origins and creation myths such as “dreaming”, “guardian spirit”, “rainbow serpent”, and so on, are universal, creation myths, across cultures, thus rejecting the spurious claim of cultural appropriation by confirming and referencing with great respect and appreciation of First Australian culture in Elva’s Qigong set and the publication as well as all the cultural ancestors of ALL AUSTRALIANS, all people including European, Asian and Indigenous – respect and appreciation across cultures - a tribute to common ancestry of all people, of all of humanity.

 

Elva also had the hope that one day her Australia Dreaming 15 Form Qigong might become part of a range of exercise and educational programs at the community and school classroom levels for both indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, thus bridging the enormous chasm of knowledge between East and West as well as contributing to improving the appalling health which exists within many indigenous communities throughout Australia.

 

For those who feel that an Australia Dreaming - a Tai Chi Qigong for Health - in a modern age can only belong to the descendants of the traditional owners of the secret knowledge of the Kung-fu Tai Chi Chuan martial arts, the Chinese “brotherhood of the boxers” and to the descendants of the First Australians, we offer as the inspiration to find a better world in President Barack Obama ’s own Dreaming, in his own book Audacity of Hope (2006) quoting the prophetic words of Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s Dreaming:

 

I have a DREAM

that my four little children

will one day live in a nation

where they will not be judged

by the color of their skin

but by the content of their character

(Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, August 28, 1963)

 

AUSTRALIA DREAMING - as a Qigong and as a Tribute to ALL our Ancestors - is offered to those who seek to embrace a modern approach to significantly improving teaching expertise, learning experiences and to find creative and safe ways to MAKING A DIFFERENCE to the health and wellbeing of not only ALL Australians, but to the global community, to anyone who is willing to experience the magic, modern journey of a Tai Chi Qigong for Health and the Gentle Way of Self Defence accessible to all people, old and young, regardless of race, creed or colour and which must include those least advantaged in society

​

Australia Dreaming: Tai Chi for Health

Advanced Instructor Training Course

First edition published in 2009 in Cleveland Australia

​ISBN 978-0-646-51095-8

Second edition published in 2010 in Cleveland Australia

under title of

Tai Chi Dreaming: Scientific Study of Tai Chi for Health as 

Mind-Body Exercise for Health, Fitness & Wellbeing 

ISBN 978-0-646-53323-0

​

Art Work for Australia Dreaming by Gail Higgins
SEE her WEBSITE www.gailhiggins.com.au

© 2012 by Tai Chi & Qigong for Health Redlands  All rights reserved  

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