The Dragon's Head Blog: Awareness Day in Italy
On Saturday October 8th, for the third time we celebrated the national Awareness Day, in the beautiful Piazza del Popolo in Rome. Taoist Tai Chi™ arts, “internal arts” as we know, were shown in the middle of “external art”, with churches, fountains, sculptures, arches from the XVI century witnessing the event, together with Michelangelo, Bernini and Valadier!
Tai Chi and Bernini
Tai Chi and Michelangelo
Tai Chi and Valadier
It was a sunny and glorious day, when some 40 members from the four branches in Italy (Rome, Florence, Enna and Livorno) gathered in Piazza del Popolo and played a series of tai chi sets, explaining what was going on, introducing the society, having the President of the National Board welcoming members, guests and visitors to this demo and having the representatives from each branch giving their greetings.
A medical doctor (responsible in Rome for a center for integrated medicine) accepted to say a few words, explaining why from a physical, mental and spiritual point of view he trusts tai chi and encourages his patients to practice it, as a brilliant tool towards better health and for enhancing the benefits from other therapies. We were grateful to him, but apparently he was even more grateful to us for having had the opportunity of sharing such a celebration. We shall keep collaborating.
Cards with our logo and motto were given to Romans, visitors and Italian and foreign tourists. In fact, we had the opportunity to spend some time also with people from Portugal, Poland, Germany and many other countries, telling them that the society is present in their countries, too, and inviting them to try joining this practice.
Here in action is one of the many meanings of the word connect, right?
Also a member from the Netherlands and a member from Belgium, visiting Rome, shared this celebration with us.
We are very happy and proud to keep celebrating.
After that, we had lunch together in our club (Roman members having prepared food in their homes, seeing as the club is not big enough to have a kitchen) and an intensive program kept us together until dinner time. We shared dinner and listened to a short medical talk on the “active ingredients” of tai chi for better health.
On Sunday morning a national instructors’ gathering completed the weekend practice and a final lunch closed the two eventful days.
Happy to share all this with you,
ciao dall’Italia!