My clients know me as a homeopath, but another hat I wear is of practitioner of T'ai Chi Ch'uan. I started studying T'ai Chi Ch'uan in 1979 when I was living in New York City, and I was fortunate to have Sophia Delza as my teacher for eleven years. Sophia has written many books on T'ai Chi Ch'uan including "The T'ai Chi Ch'uan Experience," and "T'ai Chi Ch'uan: Body and Mind in Harmony."

Sophia had studied the Wu style of T'ai Chi Ch'uan from the great Chinese master Ma Yueh Liang and this is the form she taught her students. In addition to the long form of the Wu style, Sophia taught us many short QiGong forms and two different sword forms.

Sophia's own history was as a dancer. She danced on Broadway with James Cagney. During the Chinese revolution she moved to China with her husband, who was a diplomat, and there she introduced the Chinese people to Modern dance and learned the Wu style of T'ai Chi Ch'uan and Classical Chinese Theater from them.

Sophia was a perfectionist and not one to leave out a detail or cut a corner, and her style is remarkably beautiful for its attention to detail and the perfection of its form, nothing is abbreviated, left out, shortened or simplified. The movements are kept whole and large and complete, everything in perfect balance and harmony.

Sophia was not only a great T'ai Chi Ch'uan master, but also a master teacher. She knew how to teach so that the knowledge entered your cells and went to the very core of your being. This required a great deal of love and dedication on her part, for the student as well as for what she was teaching. She understood the importance of endless repetition. She also knew how to intuitively evaluate the level that the student was at and what they were ready to absorb and understand. Starting from the broad outlines of the form, she would take the student deeper and deeper into the intricacies of the finer details.

Sophia was not one to talk flippantly. She did not speak of Taoist philosophy or the movement of Chi, not unless you had been with her for many years. She relied on the T'ai Chi exercise itself, and the students' practicing and perfecting of the form to be the teacher. Self discovery and the arising of endless insights was what this was about.

I stopped studying with Sophia in 1990 when I moved to California. Leaving these classes was one of the hardest things for me to give up when coming here, but I was determined not to lose the knowledge, but to build on what it had taken Sophia eleven years to instill in me. I have lived in California now for eleven years and I still practice my T'ai Chi Ch'uan. There are times when I neglect it, but my body and my soul send me messages that I have to get out and do my exercises. Sophia passed away several years ago in her late nineties. She was a brilliant teacher, whose mind was more lucid and clear at that great age, than almost anyone I know of at any age.

For those who are interested in studying T'ai Chi Ch'uan, I can recommend two excellent teachers. The first is Victor Olenev, who studied T'ai Chi Ch'uan for eight years with Sophia Delza, and six years with Zhong Nan Hong. Mr. Hong is also a practitioner of the Wu style and a disciple of Ma Yueh Liang. Victor can be reached at (408) 446-0945.

Fall 2000