Lighthouse Tai Chi®

Lighthouse is very pleased to welcome our first guest blog by Wild Goose Qigong and Tai Chi Instructor Sue Johnson. Sue is an accomplished teacher and student of Chinese Martial Arts and someone we hold in high esteem.  We hope you will enjoy discovering Wild Goose Qigong with Sue and want to find out more. Wild Goose Qigong -  A Daoist Qigong System Almost 2000 years old, this Daoist system of Qigong is quite vast, originally consisting of 72 forms!   Wild Goose Qigong looks more like Tai Chi as the movements are forms and not separate movements.  Similar in length to the Chen Style Tai Chi, or the Long Yang style form, it takes around 10 minutes to perform the first routine, known as the 1 st 64 (number of movements).   Beginners should then repeat this routine twice daily. Yang Meijun Kept secret until 1978 the previous Grandmaster, Yang Meijun decided to make some of the system public, initially opening up 12 forms. Most are a little shorter than the 1 st   64! Each form has a s

This month we are beginning the transformation of our garden, to create a modern outdoor space to allow us to film, train and teach.  As part of our lifestyle blog, we are going to share the journey with you and hope it will be interesting and inspiring for you.  Our North-East facing garden is a little boggy, with clay soil, but is full of colourful plants from the previous owner, which we hope to keep and move to a more manageable location. These include hydrangea, various heathers, three colours of azaleas, various Aquilegias, Centaurus,  Amaranthus Caudatus, sedum  and many others we don't recognise.  The wonderful oak stump carving we commissioned from artist Ric Gibson of Stump Art in Bolton, will become more of a focal point for the garden. The Oak tree was cut down by the previous owner and when we viewed the house, we both kept seeing the face of a Green Man looking back at us. We wanted a smiley face for the carving, so the neighbours' children would not be scared and