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Obituary:
Gerda 'Pytt' Geddes
Originally
published in the Telegraph on 21/03/2006.
 Pytt
Geddes, who died on March 4 aged 88, was the first European
to teach t'ai chi ch'uan in Britain.
T'ai
chi ch'uan is the ancient Chinese martial art form which can
also be practised as a spiritual discipline and form of meditation.
Pytt Geddes first came across it in Shanghai in the late 1940s,
and later learned it from a master in Hong Kong.
Gerda
Meyer Bruun (always known as "Pytt") was born at
Bergen, Norway, on July 17 1917, the daughter of a successful
businessman and politician who served in the Norwegian government
as Minister of Trade.
She
was educated in Bergen, then spent a year at a finishing school
in London to polish her English.
She
returned to her homeland to be groomed in what her father
called "wife-preparation"; this involved learning
child-care in an orphanage and the essential crafts of pig-slaughtering
and sausage-making on a farm.
She
became adept at tailoring a man's suit and styling a woman's
gown.
Pytt
continued her education studying English Literature and Psychology
at Pennsylvania College for Women in the United States, but
this was interrupted by the outbreak of war. She returned
to Norway, where she studied psychoanalysis under the Reichian
Ole Raknes.
She
also joined the Norwegian Resistance, secretly distributing
news bulletins from the BBC, an activity which brought her
to the attention of the Gestapo. Tipped off by a friend, she
hid in a safe house while the Nazis raided her flat.
She
then went underground, hiding for weeks in various cellars
while her escape could be organised. Waiting in the snow-covered
woods outside Oslo, she heard her first escape posse being
captured and shot.
On
the second attempt Pytt was concealed beneath a pile of logs
on a timber lorry heading for Sweden; she was accompanied
by a lame old judge and a dangerously noisy baby. The final
stage of the journey was a long night's ski across the border.
All those in the next group to use the route were captured
and killed.
Pytt
Meyer Bruun remained in Sweden for the rest of the war, and
studied dance under Birgit Aakesson. With the return of peace
she used her skills in psychoanalysis and dance to devise
dance therapy for traumatised victims of the concentration
camps.
She
then won a scholarship to the National Theatre in London,
where she taught stage movement; at this time she met her
husband, David Geddes, youngest son of the 1st Lord Geddes.
Shortly
after their wedding in 1948, the couple travelled to Shanghai
where David Geddes had secured a post with the Far East traders
Jardine Mathieson. It was while walking at dawn in Shanghai
that Pytt Geddes came upon an old man performing t'ai chi
ch'uan.
As
she watched, she experienced a growing conviction that this
was what she had been searching for.
Her
plan to find a teacher, however, was suspended after the Red
Army crossed the Yangtse, took over Shanghai and went on to
drive the Nationalists out of China.
For
the next two years Pytt Geddes and her husband were effectively
hostages in Shanghai until, in 1951, they and their infant
daughter were allowed to leave. Following a perilous train
journey with few belongings, they arrived in Hong Kong, where
they remained until their return to Britain in 1959.
In
Hong Kong Pytt found a t'ai chi ch'uan master prepared to
teach a Western woman. Such was her progress under Choy Hawk
Pang and, later, his son Choy Kam Man, that Kam Man wrote
to her in 1956: "I shall never forget you as long as
I live… because you are the first and only foreigner
I teach and also you are the first and only one successor."
The Yang style which she learned was rarely taught to Western
women, and the process of learning, through observation, with
very little verbal communication, was complex.
During
the early 1960s she began to explore Taoism through Chinese
art and literature. Taoism is a philosophy based on the laws
of nature, the importance of change and renewal and the intrinsic
importance of energy, or chi. T'ai chi ch'uan was her vehicle
for this philosophy, as in China it is practised as a martial
art with none of the allegorical interpretations with which
she invested it.
Because
Pytt Geddes's health was not suited to the Far Eastern climate,
in 1959 she and her husband returned to Britain, where he
continued to work for Jardines and later joined the Civil
Service. Pytt Geddes found it difficult to interest dance
studios and drama schools in her new passion; but gradually
she established classes in London, Cambridge and Tunbridge
Wells before joining "The Place", the London Centre
for Contemporary Dance on Euston Road, in the early 1960s.
For the next 30 years every dancer who trained at The Place
attended her t'ai chi ch'uan classes.
Two
years after her husband's death in 1995, Pytt Geddes moved
to be near one of her daughters in north-east Scotland, where
she continued to teach t'ai chi ch'uan classes until 2002
when, at the age of 85, she decided to stop instructing. By
this time, her book Looking for the Golden Needle (1991) had
been republished with an epilogue which considers preparation
for death.
Pytt
Geddes enjoyed shopping, good food (she was not a vegetarian),
fine wines, smart clothes and going to the theatre. She was
a friend of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. David Geddes's
sister was Princess Margaret of Hesse, and Pytt Geddes was
a frequent visitor to Wolfsgarten, her castle in Germany,
which played host to many artists, writers and musicians.
Her
last week was filled with all the things she liked doing,
visiting friends and taking a final t'ai chi ch'uan class.
The night before her death she attended a performance of Carmina
Burana featuring the Birmingham Royal Ballet with the younger
of her two daughters, both of whom survive her.
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