Tai Chi

Here is my mid-week update from Tai Chi Immersion Week 2013 at Brookline Tai Chi. It’s pretty cool to see folks come from all over to train for a week, but you really have to have the right mind set to make the most of the format. See what I mean here: http://youtu.be/tBOBhSljYNo When you practice, be sure to include a clear: Warm-up: where you settle in and transition from the rest of your day. Ramp-up: where the real “training” happens and you work on specific attributes of your practice. Integration period: where you don’t try to do anything new, but let the work from the ramp-up period settle down. Buffer: where, without making an abrupt shift, you transition back into the rest of your day. Whether you practice for 20 minutes or twice a day for a week, if you look for these rhythms, you will build more energy and deepen your Tai Chi practice.

The Western medical community has, for the last two decades, begun to integrate Eastern medical treatment paradigms with western routines and have been getting some amazing results. Not only are movement arts like Tai Chi and Qigong working to relieve stress and rehabilitate injuries, it is now being used to treat much deeper conditions like Parkinson´s Disease. There have been several studies that have indicated that the slow controlled movements of Tai Chi significantly improve balance and stability in Parkinson´s patients. ...

The meaning of relaxation in a Tai Chi context is often confused with the same kind of limp, collapsed, let-go feeling you get from flopping on to the couch after a long day. In fact, there’s a very different sense of “song” or relaxation in Tai Chi, which is at once easy and loose, but also energized and alert. In his translator’s introduction to Mastering Yang Style Taijiquan, Louis Swaim nails the nuance of the concept. ...

Most people are familiar with the benefits of basic Tai Chi: relaxation, better balance, relief from stiff joints. As you get more internally connected and learn to listen to the inside of your body as you practice, there are whole other layers of benefits, hidden beneath the surface of the graceful, flowing movements typically associated with Tai Chi. In this video, Robert Tangora explains one of the more interesting ones, that is rarely taught with the precision he is outlining: how to use specific Tai Chi movements to target and massage individual organs in your body, like your liver, spleen, heart, and lungs. ...

Try this follow-along practice on Emptying the Leg. We’re combining principles from Standing Qigong and Tai Chi to create a blend of stillness, movement, and internal contrast. The progression includes: Varying your stance, increasing in complexity and physical demands. Increased contrast over time between empty and full or unweighted and weighted legs Heightened sense of sinking as you stabilize in each posture Perhaps the most surprising element of this exercise is the way that it’s going to help you build flow. Once you’ve set up the yin/yang contrast in the legs, you begin to search it out in your moving forms. Instead of thinking of shifting the weight, you dial in greater contrast between the legs, and that leads you to movement.

Every six months or so, one of our Senior Instructors at Brookline Tai Chi tells me that he’s had an amazing revelation about how to do the kwa squat. The kwa squat is one of the very first things we teach, he’s been doing Tai Chi for 40 years, and he gets new insight into it all the time. Amazing, right? Tai Chi and Back Pain One of the reasons we get so interested in this exercise is its power to relieve pressure on the spine and open up important joints of the body. ...

In April, we will host Energy Arts Senior Instructors Eric Peters and Craig Barnes for the Wu Style Tai Chi Immersion Week at Brookline Tai Chi. As Craig and Eric have been preparing for the event and planning their curriculum, I’ve been thinking about all the different ways you practice Tai Chi. Sometimes, it depends on your stage of learning. Sometimes it comes down to the kind of day you’re having or your overall practice goals. ...

I want to thank Paul Brennan for making translations of classic Tai Chi texts available online. Pleasevisit his site and let him know we all appreciate the awesome work he’s doing. In **THE TAIJI BOXING OF MR. WU JIANQUAN - FOR SELF-STUDY, **by Chen Zhenmin & Ma Yueliang, published by the Health Magazine Society, May, 1935, translation by Paul Brennan, May, 2012, the authors explain the foundational body mechanics of Tai Chi. ...

In issue 48 of Qi Magazine, there is an article about Wu Style Tai Chi Master Wang Hao Da. The article describes Master Wang’s early training and his desire to interact with as many different people as possible to refine his art. The description of Zhong Ding, or Central Equilibrium, drawn from the article, explains much of what organized Master Wang’s teaching and personal practice, as described to me by one of my teachers, Robert Tangora. ...

Fuzhong Li, Ph.d, is a leading Tai Chi researcher, based at the Oregon Research Institute. Since 2001, he has studied the effects of exercise, especially Tai Chi, on balance and falls prevention in aging populations. Tai Chi: Moving for Better Balance is the CDC-approved falls prevention program that Dr. Li has developed based on his research. When I visited him in Oregon recently, he showed me the refinements he’s made to his program, we visited one of his classes and we played with some of the equipment he uses in his lab for testing different components of balance (see how I did below!). ...