Tai Chi, Qigong, Shiatsu, Meditation, Energy, Healing with Nature
Tai Chi, Qigong, Shiatsu, Meditation, Energy Awareness, Healing with Nature
Biography
Who is Ray Pawlett?
My earliest memory of studying anything remotely attached to Energy Arts or Martial Arts is studying Yoga with my brother, Mark, as a boy. The word “study” would be to overstate the nature of what was happening though. “Play” would perhaps be a better word!
The reality was that we had discovered our dad's old Yoga book and we were trying to achieve the positions. After completion or even partial completion of a position, it would be practised and swapped with some of the other boys at school who had the same idea of fun.
Whilst at college in the 1980s, I joined up with my brother once more, this time to learn Tae Kwon Do at a local club. I enjoyed the fact that I was learning a traditional martial art and that the training was clearly improving my self-confidence and fitness levels. However, at the time, I couldn't find in the Tae Kwon Do any of the aspects that related to Energy or deeper work that had been hinted at in the old Yoga book or mentioned in the books, films and magazines.
This all changed when I went to Nottingham Trent University in the early 1990s to study a degree in Engineering. I'd heard of the ancient Chinese art “Tai Chi” but had not had the opportunity to learn the style. Whilst at Uni, I met the highly skilled teacher, Chunshen Zhu, of the Universe Tai Chi School.
This was finally what I had been searching for. The training combined all of the martial arts, energy building and meditation aspects that I had been seeking. At the same time, I continued with the Tae Kwon Do training and also took up Yoga classes. Engineering seemed to have become a bit of a second priority but I did get my degree! I also won awards and medals in some local and national Tae Kwon Do tournaments.
After finishing my degree, I moved away from Nottingham and, during this period, I tried several other martial arts, such as Karate, Judo, and Aikido. Whilst I enjoyed all of these arts for what they are, I still really wanted to get back to my Tai Chi training.
In the mid 1990s, I achieved this goal when I met Chris Pei of the US Wushu Academy and Shelagh Grandpierre of the Tai Chi Alliance. They taught me the traditional Yang style of Tai Chi, a style I still practice and teach to this day.
I then started to learn Shiatsu with Sue Hix and Tom Litten at the Rosewell Shiatsu centre in Lincolnshire. In Shiatsu, I found a discipline that worked with the mind, body and spirit simultaneously, in a similar way to Tai Chi, but the focus here was completely on healing. What with giving and receiving Shiatsu treatments and the Energy building exercises and meditations, my world was opening up in a way that I very much enjoyed.
In 1999, Shelagh suggested to me that I should consider entering some Tai Chi tournaments. Although I'd been keenly practising Tai Chi, the idea of tournaments had not been on my agenda. Nevertheless, I decided that there was no harm in entering - it might even be fun!
With this attitude, I entered the Tai Chi Union of Great Britain’s tournament in Oxford and became UK Champion for Traditional Weapons. I also entered the EuroWirral tournament, held in the Wirral, Merseyside, and won second place in another UK open tournament.
Tournament success bought me increased recognition in the martial arts and Energy world, which was to give me the opportunity to write my first book, which was published in 2001.
The book was a huge success and lead me to writing and publishing several books and magazine articles about martial arts and Energy arts. Writing has continued to be a passion of mine and I'm still writing books and magazine articles to this day.
By this time, I was teaching several Tai Chi classes, which I found to be a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Not only did it give me the opportunity to make a positive impact on people's lives, but it also helped me to improve my own skill levels and understanding of the art. I have now had the opportunity to teach many people of every skill level, fitness level, age and culture.
During these days, I was very enthusiastic about Tai Chi and the Energy Arts but I still felt that he needed to understand the concept of Energy more deeply. Around this time, I was introduced to a gentleman called Mike Webster, who taught a system called Waveform Energetics.
In Waveform Energetics, Mike teaches the participants how to feel and sense Energy in a way that is understandable by all and is non-subjective. To the pragmatic engineer in me, the fact that it was non-subjective and verifiable by all who had the skill was very important as this indicated to me that the perceptions were not illusory or self-deceptions.
Mike also taught me how to feel Energy at a distance and go beyond the boundaries of time and space. I am now a teacher for Waveform Energetics and have devised many of the exercises that form part of the Waveform teaching program.
Mike Webster then introduced Ray to Joy and Mary, two extremely talented healers and teachers who had taught Mike the information he needed to know in order to devise Waveform Energetics. Joy and Mary run the Pathways Healing and Teaching Centre on the Black Isle, near Inverness, and in the Orkneys. Key to their philosophy is the idea that all nature heals and that we, as parts of nature, can use the forces of nature for our own healing.
Over the years, Joy and Mary have taught me how to feel the Energies of nature, connect with ancestral energies, understand and feel the Chakra system through direct experience and many other priceless pieces of information. Whilst training with them in 2010, they helped me to create my own Chi Gung system.
Other teachers who have had a huge impact on me include Paul Lambeth, who taught me how to understand the Energetics of food and the effect that it has on our whole system, and Rex Lassalle, who taught me an ancient oriental system called “9 Star Ki”, which Rex uses to evaluate a person’s Energetic constitution. I was also privileged to learn meditation in the Theravada Buddhist tradition from the monks at the Amarvati Monastery in Hertfordshire.
Over the years, I've been fortunate in having some of the best teachers in modern times. There are many others in the mix but the strongest influences are mentioned above.
The biggest lessons we have though are from life, not from our teachers. For much of 2009, I spent a great deal of my time helping and supporting my mother, who was seriously ill with cancer, and supporting the rest of my family and friends whilst they mutually supported me. This proved to be both a testing year and a year of learning where many of the practices and philosophies that I had learned would be put to the test.
The following year, 2010, was a difficult year for me. At the beginning of this year, my beloved mother passed away. Thereafter, I also went through a divorce, moved house twice, changed job and, having subsequently decided that the job was not for me, quit the job. Soon after that, I set up teaching and practising full-time and the Ki-Ways you see today was born.
I'm quite convinced that it's thanks to the practices and philosophies I've learned over the years that I was able not only to get through the year but to get through the year with the courage to break away from my old, nine-to-five, career path and set myself up as a Tai Chi and Energy Arts teacher and therapist, dedicated to helping others in whatever way I can.
