T’ai Chi Ch’üan and the Force

May 16th, 2006

I’ve been watching Star Wars most of my life. I used to come home to my parents house late at night after partying with my friends and put on a video tape of Return of the Jedi to fall asleep to. Of course, I’ve seen all six movies. I’m not a nut about it; I didn’t see a couple of them till they came out on DVD. Star Wars has really been a big deal - to me and many other people. The story of the Skywalkers has effected millions of people around the world and Yoda has to be one of the greatest teachers of the last 50 years.
I’ve been studying T’ai Chi Ch’üan for a little while-bit now. I’ve learned that the word chi, or ji, means “life force”. So many of the concepts that I’ve been learning in Tai Chi, I heard before in Star Wars!
I have come to the realization that I have been studying to be a Jedi!
This intrigued me so much that I decided that it would be a good idea to not only study Tai Chi, but to study Star Wars as well.
My first thought was to read the Star Wars books behind the movies. I picked up “Star Wars” and “The Phantom Menace“. What a bore! They weren’t anything more than the movies. It was like someone was watching the movies and jotting down what happened.
OK, I’ve already seen the movies and understand what happens there and the lessons in the force. I looked up Star Wars books online.
There are like a million!
I decided to ask around a bit. Faith told me that she had read like 20 or 30 of these books. She said they were “OK”. She had heard, though, that the “Thrawn Trilogy” by Timothy Zahn was really the way to go.
These books take place about 5 years after Return of the Jedi. I’d heard of Timothy Zahn before, so I looked it up. Sounded as good as anything else. I decided to start a Star Wars Book Club.
If you click on the link at the end of my little blog here, you can check it out and join if you like.
I thought an online book club would be perfect. Nobody would have to coordinate schedules to meet up and I could still have conversations with people about the books.
Sometimes, it’s a real drag when you read a book and no one else has or is reading it. You feel like talking about it and the people who get stuck listening to you just can’t get onboard with the conversation. You end up just telling them the story as you remember it. - Not always that much fun.
So this is the scoop: goto swbc.JonRyser.com, click on “register” in the top left, fill out the info (don’t worry, it’s me. I’m not letting anyone get that info, and I won’t do anything with it either. It’s just for inter-club comunications.), go back to the main page and click “profile” (you need to be logged in.) in the upper left, fill out all the cool profile stuff (like selecting a nifty avatar to represent you), and start reading.
You can ad input to the forum at anytime in your read. In fact, the more you write, the better. TALK TO ME! Let me know your thoughts. I’m sooo curious!

Click here to check out Big Talk’s Star Wars Book Club.

All the best,
- Big Talk

Entry Filed under: Thoughts