Embracing tigers – Fairfax criminal lawyer on handling the biggest challenges

Fairfax criminal lawyer on handling the biggest challenges

Embracing tigers is a concept I first learned in the taijiquan/ t’ai chi ch’uan martial art that I daily practice. As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I know the importance of applying taijiquan principles to criminal defense battle, and to seeing this fight as involving tigers to be engaged, neutralized and sent on their way, and even internalizing characteristics of the tiger.

The Cheng Man Ch’ing-style 37 posture taijiquan form that I practice has three postures about tigers: embrace tiger and return to mountain (pao hu kuei shan) (posture 17); step back and ride tiger (t’ui pu k’ua hu) (posture 35); and bend bow and shoot tiger (wan kung she hu) (posture 37A).

Virginia criminal attorney recognizes that embracing tigers is like keeping your friends close and your enemies closer

Perhaps Don Corleone was a taijiquan practitioner, having advised keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. As my taijiquan teachers insist, once you lose body contact with your opponent, you are at risk for harm. By keeping physical contact with our opponents, we keep them in check, can better sense where they are coming from and going to, and can better defang, neutralize and overcome them.

At the same time, we need to have room to move away from danger, which is why Gerry Spence (I am told he said it) was wise in counseling never to join the tiger in its cage.

Fairfax criminal lawyer knows that tigers are not to be feared. They live inside and outside us.

Fear is weakening. We can avoid harm without having fear, just as we can avoid poison ivy, poisonous snakes, and quicksand without fearing them. We have our internal tigers of power, fear, and potential self-harm, and our external tigers of actual and potential harm.

To me, the taijiquan posture’s name embrace tiger/return to mountain is about first being in full presence with the tiger in order to know, hear, and not fear the tiger; to then neutralize the tiger; and then to send the tiger on its way, for the tiger not to return. Of course, the taijiquan posture of bend bow and shoot tiger means we also must always be ready when necessary to escalate the harm we inflict on our opponents.

The courtroom battlefield is my playground, just as one can delight even when engaging tigers. For instance, even the man chased by a tiger to hold for dear life to a vine on the side of a cliff can powerfully delight in that very moment in tasting the delicious strawberry growing therefrom.

Proverbial tigers are always present inside and outside of use. They are here to be powerfully engaged if they cannot be avoided, tamed, neutralized, and never feared.

Fairfax criminal lawyer Jonathan L. Katz incorporates his two decades of regular martial arts practice into his battle for each client. To discuss your case with Jon, please contact his staff at 703-383-1100 to schedule a confidential appointment.