Acknowledgment

By trusting me, by their willingness to get into a learning process with me and through their questions, my students give me the chance to constantly deepen my own practice.

To my friends and colleagues at home and abroad who so generously and indulgently have shared their time, patience and experience with me and continue to do so in hundreds of practice hours, I owe countless learning experiences.

Every now and then during the first years of my quest I met Taiji players or teachers from other traditions and schools who inspired me through their specific approach to Taiji or certain skills – through their particular didactics, through certain aspects of the art which they had refined in some remarkable manner or by their attitude to searching and learning, and becoming examples by the way they were reinforcing the “beginner’s mind”. I especially remember Linda Chase Broda (†) and Linda Myoki Lehrhaupt, Epi van de Pol, Serge Dreyer and Lauren Smith.

Also to several teachers from Master Huang’s school (esp. Wee Kee-Jin, but also Yek Sing Ong and Lau King) I owe useful insights and experiences. Working with them has helped me in various ways to find my personal path. Choong Chi-Pin will always be my role-model when it comes to the attitude of never ceasing to learn/always remaining a student, even as an experienced teacher.

I entered this path into the fascinating world of Taiji under the guidance of Franz Redl. I also owe it to his open mind that I was to meet Patrick Kelly whom he invited regularly to Vienna between 1994 and 2007.

Finally, there are no words to adequately describe my gratitude towards my teacher Patrick Kelly.
I have been indebted to him for more than 21 years, during which he has generously and patiently shared his masterly abilities, has crossed the ocean countless times in order to teach many like me in Europe. Only gradually have I begun to see the incomparable foresight of his long term and unsurpassed systematic approach, always focusing on one goal: to support those in their process of spiritual development who want it, to put across those methods which have been proven and tested, allowing the student to delve more deeply and with greater efficiency.

Over the years I have felt more and more clearly what has been experienced by many generations of disciples before: that this type of teacher-student relationship constitutes a privilege and carries mutual obligations. I hope to meet part of this responsibility by offering my guidance to the next generation of Taiji students.

2014 Patrick Kelly shifted his focus to Shanghai/China where he established a cross cultural training space for Daoist Internal Arts and related disciplines, in recognition of the worldwide influence of Daoist cultural heritage. The teaching in Europe has taken on different formats, and is now more and more being carried out by the network of senior students.