Inner Form on Dan Kleiman

Why You Should Not Worry About Breathing in Tai Chi

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 10:00:00 +0000

In this Inner Form office hours clip, Nate asked me about a specific issue on breathing in the Marriage of Heaven and Earth qigong.

If your main focus is Tai Chi, then I would recommend that you pretty much ignore breathing as you practice, but you should focus on opening up the body enough to facilitate deep, even, smooth breathing.

In the following clips, we look at how opening up the body will lead to deeper breathing, what stages you will go through in this process, and finally, I show him a specific technique for keeping the deep internal connections loose as he does the Marriage of Heaven and Earth qigong.

March Inner Form Coaching Questionnaire

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 08:00:00 +0000

Please take a few minutes and share the details of your current practice with me. This will help us refine what we’re doing in the Inner Form section for the month of March. Thanks!

/taichi/march-inner-form-coaching-questionnaire/

Making More Space Inside Your Body

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 10:00:00 +0000

One of the most counter-intuitive feelings in qigong, Tai Chi, or Ba Gua is the way that making more space inside the body allows you open more outwardly as well.

In these two Inner Form office hours video clips, I show Brendan how making more space in the kwa and shoulder’s nest can help her take a more connected step in her circle walking practice and develop a more fluid single palm change.

February Office Hours: Sinking, Dissolving, Internal Organ Movement

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 07:31:30 +0000

In this Office Hours recording, we discuss:

How to extend your standing qigong practice beyond 20 minutes.
The best way to deal with chronically tight muscles while standing.
How to relax without collapsing internally.
What’s next for your internal organs after you develop a strong breathing practice.
How to connect a skill like twisting the soft tissue of the arms to the guts.

Download the Office Hours recording here.

Turn the Legs to Turn the Body

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:01:07 +0000

When you see a series of exercises, you can either look at what’s common to all of them, or how they are different. In this video, I go through several variations of turning exercises, where I’m using the connection between the legs and the spine to drive body movement.

Most people will look at the arms in each exercise and say, “those are not the same movements” and that’s true, but they would be missing the most important part: how the legs turn the body.

Twisting Through the Legs

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Twisting, especially the legs, is one of those techniques that sounds really cool, but it easy to overdo. Going slow and steady with twisting can help everything loosen up.

My advice: at first work on feeling what naturally happens rather than trying to make something happen. Develop sensitivity.

In this “office hours” clip, we look at twisting the legs in Cloud Hands and troubleshoot some of her stuck spots.

We went on to explore the “rings” of the legs, which are horizontal bands of tissue running around the legs. At first, when you work with the rings, you use them as markers for developing better feeling awareness of the soft tissue. Later on, the rings can be adjusted, increasing their internal or external rotation, to fine-tune your leg alignments.

How to Get More Flexible without Adding Stretching to Your Practice

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know I love a challenging practice problem. One of our Inner Form members wrote to me and said, “I need more flexibility, but I don’t have time to add a whole other stretching routine to my current practice. What can I do?”

I have good news if you’ve been mulling over a similar practice problem. It all comes down to how you understand flexibility.

My Favorite Breathing Hack

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:02:15 +0000

The Wall Test is one of my favorite “breathing hacks” – a simple, fast exercise you can do to get feedback on how well you are breathing. Check out this instruction in this video and try it for yourself:

This breathing exercise is taken from a live breathing class I taught last week. In the class, we looked at several different facets of training your breathing, including:

The difference between nerves, fluids, and chi when you practice.
How to play with internal pressures to get the biggest health benefit.
The quality of all-day energy you get from massaging your internal organs (which is really different from the typical “buzz” you think of from stimulants like caffeine).

The class included theory, practical guidance, and follow-along exercises. If you didn’t have the chance to attend live, you can still get the webinar replay, which is over an hour long. Sign up here for instant access.

Learning to Use Your Kwa in Tai Chi

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 07:40:04 +0000

In this “office hours” post, Nate asked me about kwa work in Tai Chi. Specifically, we were looking at movements where you squat in a front stance. The question is figuring out how low to go and why.

In Tai Chi, you use your kwa to control your movements. At first, think of your kwa as simply the fold in your hip joint. In the following video, though, I explain how your understanding, and use, of the kwa changes as you learn to work deeper into the body.

How Do I Keep My Awareness for Jumping Around?

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 11:57:30 +0000

One of the major goals of standing qigong is to develop a strong downward flow that clears stagnant energy out of your system and strengthens your natural restorative abilities.

When you begin to work on this process, though,Â it’s natural to wonder how strict you need to be able sticking with the downward flow and what to do if you start to notice other things happening in the body. Recently, I got this question via email that nails the exact issue:

Guided Practice Aides

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:34:59 +0000

Here’s a round-up of guided practice aides I’ve put together in various sections of the site.

What else would help you with your current practice? Let me know here.

To download the audio files below, right click and “save as”.

Breathing

Use these basic principles as a guide for your breathing and standing practice:

Downloads:

20-Minute Guided Practice #1

20-Minute Guided Practice #2

Standing Qigong

You can progress through longer standing sessions with these guided practice mp3s or pick one on any given day that matches your practice goals:

How Active Should I Be When Standing?

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 15:52:08 +0000

Lately, I’ve been trying to do somesinking during standing qigong,Â in addition to other practices, like opening and closing, but I don’t get the full calming effect of the sinking.Â This is a problem, because it gets a lot of energy moving and something this manifests as more anger than I would like. What should I do?

What's The Best Way to Practice "Sinking the Chest?"

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:01:06 +0000

Sinking the chest while raising the spine is a key energetic alignment practiced in Tai Chi to facilitate a grounding, downward flow of energy.

Martial artists use it to develop their root and anyone who “gets stuck in their head” will find some relief employing this principle.

The question is:

Do you have a good standing position to practice sinking the chest?

How Do I Sequence My Practice Sets for Qigong and Tai Chi?

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:06:02 +0000

If I’m going to practice several types of qigong and maybe some tai chi, does it matter what order I do things in? Or if I do one longer practice vs two shorter ones during the day?