How to Trust Your Feet

A tutorial on practicing balance with Fran Snyder (New York School of Tai Chi Chuan).

Fee: $30. To register please contact [email protected]

Balance requires our feet secured to the ground and heads held upright. In tai chi, balance enables the earth – heaven connection, a body alignment that allows standing, walking, and moving through our days feeling stable and safe.

In this tutorial, we’ll start by finding the tripod, the base of support at the bottoms of our feet. We’ll learn to relax our knees and steady our ankles. We’ll play with gravity in order to settle ourselves when we wobble. We’ll stand on one leg and rise up like the White Crane. We’ll learn Walking on Thin Ice, an exploration of balance as a relearned skill for moving safely on irregular surfaces.

Anyone can participate: Wear comfortable clothes and a pair of warm socks.

Masks are required for this workshop, the auditorium is equipped with PureBlue air purifiers

Maximum of 15 participants.

Fran will lead a 10 session beginner level tai chi class, at the Spencertown Academy, beginning on March 3. For further information please contact: [email protected]

Fran Snyder is on the faculty of the New York School of Tai Chi Chuan, an affiliate of the Tai Chi Foundation, which trains teachers in the Yang style tai chi short form, brought to the United States in the early 1970s by Professor Cheng Man Ch’ing. Fran teaches in New York City and in Chatham.

Images of Margaret Matsumoto are copyright © 1980 T’ai Chi Foundation, Inc. All rights reserved.