People often ask why we do chi gung sets in certain numbers. Whenever I’ve heard Bruce Frantzis answer that question, he tells a story about these elaborate experiments they run in the Taoist monasteries, over generations, with control groups and varying repetitions, to see what the optimal number of repetitions for each exercise is. I always feel bad for the monks who spent their lives doing a few too many of each exercise. ...
As a tai chi teacher and movement coach, I get to meet a lot of people who want to relax, slow down and have more energy for the things they love to do in life. But there’s a very common misconception that I encounter and I think it leads people to spend too much time chasing the wrong things when it comes to a relaxation practice. Hopefully, this series will begin to clarify what the best way to start a relaxation practice is and how to most efficiently get the results you want. ...
Can you learn qigong, or any movement art, online? This is a burning question for me right now. My immediate reaction is “NO!”. However, I believe there is a significant role for supplemental online material in the overall learning process, even for movement arts. Here’s why it’s a bad idea to learn movement online: Learning movement is a kinesthetic experience, not a visual one – you have to feel where you are in space and you certainly can’t get that from staring at a screen You need feedback – when you are learning something new, you need refinement and guidance, usually hands-on Some things need to be felt on another person – we get into this all the time with more subtle qigong principles and there is no way around feeling what’s going on in the instructor’s body to learn what you are trying to do in your own Those are my big 3 “No way!” reasons you can’t learn qigong online. Or I should say, the reason why online learning shouldn’t be your sole way of learning this stuff. Let’s look at it from a different point of view. ...
Last week I got back from two weeks in the UK doing an instructor training with Bruce Frantzis on Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body, the core chi gung set in his program. We’re right back into the swing of classes now, but I wanted to post a little review before too much time passes. The Energy Gates set is made up of six different exercises – they run the gamut from standing still holding a simple posture, to vigorous shifting, turning, and swinging. The range of skills and movements you can practice with them sets the foundation for all of the other work done in more sophisticated chi gung sets as well as in tai chi and ba gua. ...