The Making of a Master Coach
My Journey is like Yours
By Eric Randolph
(Note: This story was copied with permission from Eric’s website Tao Of Being. If you would like to learn more about Eric and the Practice of Tai Chi he offers a class every other Saturday at the Being One Center you can find dates and times on our Calendar of Events)
In truth every beginning starts with a ton of stress and pressure, a type of birth. Growing up was very hard, being a sensitive and creative child in a household filled with anger, fear and sickness.
In the beginning I was shaped mostly by my grandmother. I admired her strength and poise as she nursed my bedridden grandfather and watched over us as my mom and dad worked many hours to build their cleaning company. Father and mother worked around the clock to provide for us so it’s no wonder my father was filled with fear and anger, at times enough to be physically abusive.
Although it was a rare occurrence, violence in the home was a normal thing to see between his siblings and in the projects just above the hill where we lived. There were times it was even condoned and felt as something to perpetuate as a good aspect of self awareness. From the age of 9 all the way to age 20 this way of being was what I had to fight against becoming inside of myself.
Finding Tai Chi at the age of 17 was a godsend that I didn’t realize until much later in my tutelage. When I started I just knew that I had found a part of myself that was both gentle and powerful. I had seen it in my Master Glenn Hairston and my Shaolin brothers, which is why I wished to join him in the first place. To me he was and still is the epitome of the calm, kind and powerful energy that I needed to overcome my own weaknesses within and so in the summer of 1990 I began my formal tutelage of Tai Chi Chuan.
It took around 3 years for me to begin taking it seriously. Many times during classes my master, being the narcotics detective for the Pittsburgh police, would have issues with tension due to chasing a perpetrator. He taught me a form of acupressure to quickly assist him in easing tension and pain accumulated in his very intense career. Over many nights and days of practice and assisting my skill became very meditative. I started to realize that there was a certain breathing method I was using to keep my emotions in check so I could focus more accurately my touch on Glenn’s muscles to release his tension. It was great watching my master’s face go from exhausted and pale to filled with color and full of relief and so I began doing it for fellow students, friends, and family when they needed it.
Slowly but surely I started to understand that by helping them there was something deeper going on in my study of Tai Chi Chuan. I realized that because of the way I moved it was forcing me to breathe in a certain pattern which my fellow practitioners, family, and friends weren’t realizing. Through my breathing I began to diminish my emotional pain and fear and in addition, through my successful practices, I had gone a full 7 years without becoming sick.
Somehow I had found a way to cheat sickness and disease so I began studying my own behavior mentally, emotionally, and physically. I felt weird because I knew there were tons of internal practitioners around the world like me but I had always heard of them getting sick with colds, flu and other common ailments. Some have even developed cancers and chronic illnesses. I realized I had really found something rare about myself… I had stumbled upon perfect health.
After I received my certificate to teach Tai Chi Chuan in 1997 began studying with students and teaching to perfect my understanding of how I mastered my health. After many years of watching people embrace the most beautiful aspects of themselves, turning their despair and illness into transformation, I have derived a powerful healing formula that I now offer to you.
Chronic illness is something all of mankind has within and I have found the key to unlocking this alignment of suffering forever. Through teaching you we will end this type of fear alignment together.