Welcome to an intensive four-day workshop at the Nøsen Retreat Centre in the Norwegian mountains. Ann will guide participants through the basic principles of Tai Chi Grammar, an instrument that helps us become more fluent and fluid in our movement.
The approach is systematic, but also playful and very interactive, giving participants tools and concepts they can use to enhance their practice. Expect to work in pairs and threes to test out ideas. The workshop is open for anyone who has learned the tai chi set, as well as experienced practitioners.
Tai Chi Grammar
In language, grammar is the underlying structure guiding and informing the way we speak. Once we speak a language, we no longer need the grammar. But while we are learning, grammar is a tool; it helps us along the way. Likewise, Tai Chi Grammar is an explanatory framework that aims to give students, both veteran practitioners and people newer to the art, a way to deepen their understanding of the movement, to gain autonomy in their own practice, and to connect to the spine.
A resident of Norway since 1996, Ann Danaiya Usher began her practice of tai chi in the style of Moy Lin Shin in the early 1980s in Montréal. She has taught classes and workshops in Canada, Sweden, England and Norway. Over the last decade, she has been investigating the internal structures of tai chi, in search of a methodology to inform her own practice and to ground her teaching. This pursuit has resulted in the development of a set of principles – a “grammar” of tai chi.
Along with her teacher Philippe Gagnon, Ann presented this grammar for the first time as a systematic whole at Nøsen in the fall of 2024. Philippe describes Tai Chi Grammar this way: “it methodically offers instructors a way to introduce students to a central, yet often elusive, feature of internal movement which involves stretching the lower spine … addressing one of the cornerstones of internal movement in a structured way.” Here’s what participants from Canada and several countries in Europe have said about the grammar: “It changed the understanding of my tai chi practice … the newest perspective of tai chi that I have come across so far … it transformed my understanding of sitting and dropping … very important in my journey and my learning of tai chi.”