Tiger Omen?

The Year of the Tiger celebration lasts two weeks. A week ago, we marked the New Year by launching our martial art ebook and video – TanDao Tiger Combat Series. Toni, our resident Taoist & Chinese cosmologist, cautions this year of the metal tiger will provide ongoing challenges. But with the courage and tenacity of the tiger we can overcome adversity. An experience we had last November is appropriate and we would like to share it with you.

We went to the seashore to film our tiger videos as we were planning to introduce our Shaolin/JKD tiger style for the lunar new year. But a Nor’Easter storm put a halt to that. It was awesome to see the tumultuous ocean, but our mission was aborted by bad weather. We were bummed. The last evening, however, we managed to film a wellness exercise to a stupendous sunset and in the following dawn we also filmed tiger kung fu form sequences. We were on a roll. (Click on links to see the videos!)

Our schedule was actually completed. We were elated. While walking back along the seashore looking through rocks and shells for our zen garden in the city, a tiny object in the sand simultaneously caught both Toni’s and my own attention. It was a tiger figure. An omen? Although our rational minds may regard this as superstitious, a holistic view sees it as synchronicity, a meaningful coincidence as psychologist Jung would say.

As for our tiny, smiling tiger talisman, we choose to view it as a positive omen. After all, this figure was utterly miniscule in the vast space of the seashore. Yet we both found it. Go figure… What do you think?

In the week since its release, we’ve received enthusiastic responses to our TanDao Tiger Combat downloads from martial artists of different styles. We take it as a good sign. May the tiger bring us all a good year!

Lawrence Tan