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by Jennifer
Sexton
HARWICH--- Millions of people worldwide practice
the ancient Chinese energetic art of tai chi chuan (taijiquan), known
for centuries to promote deep relaxation and excellent health, to prevent
injury, and to ward off or heal illness. Harwich author and teacher
David Silver has recently been awarded, along with co-author Ramel Rones,
the silver medal in the meditation/relaxation category of the Independent
Publishers Living Now Book Awards, designed to honor the year's best
books that help readers attain healthier, more fulfilling, and productive
lives. Their book, “Sunrise Tai Chi: Simplified Tai Chi for Health
and Longevity,” currently holds steady as the number two bestseller
among the thousands of titles available on the subject through online
bookseller Amazon.
Silver explains that he has always been interested in meditation and
martial arts. He began training in goju¯ ryu karate at age 11,
and studied taijiquan, qigong and yoga in his 20s. He was certified
in 2006 to teach qigong by Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming, an acclaimed author
and teacher of kung fu, tai chi chuan and chin na grappling, a leading
authority on qigong, and founder of Yang’s Martial Arts Association
(YMAA) and YMAA Publication Center. Silver offers private and group
qigong and taijiquan classes all over Cape Cod and works as a writer,
producer, and director of instructional martial arts and health books
and DVDs. In February of this year, he became only the second student
in 35 years to be certified by Dr. Yang to carry on his legacy of researching,
teaching and sharing (Qigong).
“It’s very exciting,” Silver says. “I’m
really happy. It came after a lot of work and study.”
The sight of a group of people in a park, gym or community center moving
through the gentle flow of a tai chi form for relaxation, physical benefits
and enjoyment has become a familiar one over the past decade or so.
What may come as a surprise is the amount of hard data that has been
gathered supporting the use of such energy work in the treatment of
disease.
“My co-author Ramel Rones has been a senior disciple of Dr. Yang
since the early ‘80s. He has led a lot of the tai chi and qigong
classes at the Boston YMAA school,” explains Silver. “He
had an idea to create a book and video. He mastered all of the tai chi
and qigong techniques and started using them at the Dana Farber Cancer
Institute and at Tufts School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School,
where he is employed as a scientific consultant of mind-body therapies.
We wanted to capture the curriculum from those healing-oriented classes
and put them into a tai chi book geared toward the complete beginner
market. We gave it a beautiful kind of mainstream cover so that it would
draw in total beginners but lead them to kind of an intermediate and
advanced level practice right away.”
Silver and Rones envisioned a book for beginners unlike the others on
the market.
“There are tons of beginner books out there that just don’t
teach the internal arts. They teach a section of the form, or the whole
form, and you memorize a ton of movements, but you don’t learn
the breathwork skills and visualization skills that have actually been
proven to help heal your body, and that’s why most people want
to practice tai chi and chi gong in the first place. We made it our
mission to instruct all of those internal aspects step by step, in a
really simple and clear way that you can start to use right away. It’s
been slowly climbing since its publication. It’s getting great
word of mouth. All of the reviews on there are spectacular. It’s
really starting to take off, and has really found an audience. We are
psyched.”
Silver’s excitement about the success of “Sunrise Tai Chi”
is about more than the book’s sales and popularity. It’s
also about the auspicious timing of the announcement of the award, which
coincides with a new project in the works.
“It’s great timing, because our second book is at the editor,”
Silver says. “It’s called ‘Sunset Tai Chi.’
The whole concept is using the internal arts to relax and cool down
at the end of the day. It’s all about how to actually use the
same skills, except for stress release, which is a huge topic, as stress
is the root of illness. It will be published in spring of 2010.”
In addition to his teaching, writing, producing and directing, Silver
finds time to volunteer for the nonprofit YMAA Retreat Center in California,
a 10-year kung fu training program for exceptional students.
For information about David Silver, including how to purchase “Sunrise
Tai Chi” and his current teaching schedule, visit http://www.capecodqigong.com/.
Silver teaches .... For more information about the retreat center, visit
www.ymaa-retreatcenter.com.
Current
class times are different than those at the time of this article. Please
see schedule.
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