Now is the time of the wood element in the northern hemisphere. It’s spring the trees are coming into leaf, things are coming into bloom and growth is abundant all around us.

In Taoism and other tradition too, the wood element is one of the five elements, wood fire earth metal and water. At different times of the year, each of the elements is predominant and that is a good time to work with the energy of that element, though all the element are always there in all seasons.

This episode is about the wood element and connecting with a tree to ask for help with something.

This episode is for riders who feel nervous sometimes and it’s to invite them to consider changing saying or thinking the words ‘I am a nervous rider’ to ‘sometimes I feel nervous when I ride’!

Taoists believe that we create identities or egos for ourselves that we can create thousands  and thousand of identities without even realising.

When we unwittingly create identities for ourselves, we can live from them and be controlled by them, without us really knowing and this can close down our lives in ways we might not have imagined.

This episode is an overview of the development of the Equestrian Tai Chi training system for riders. It’s about how the different trainings in the system developed, and how they’re now viewed as interrelated rather than isolated. We can almost use parts, or all of them, every day out riding, to keep ourselves and our horse calm, to feel our chi flow in harmony with our horse riding, to communicate with our horse through our energy riding, and to even have a spiritual connection with our horse riding.

This episode is about how we can regenerate and smooth our energy with our practice, in the same way a heating system fitted with a magnet can!

It’s New Year’s Day today and this is a time when we often look ahead to the year to come and our hopes and dreams.

This episode is about using the Tai Chi symbol to help us achieve something that we really want, but are blocked in some way from achieving. 

You’ll need a big sheet of paper and a pen and some time to get your thoughts down relating to the Yin Yang of the situation!

I hope you enjoy this exercise and find it useful!