This winter, PBS is airing a special one-hour introduction to Tai Chi with David-Dorian Ross. I highly recommend watching the episode, whether you have a lot or a little Tai Chi experience. The way Ross presents basic concepts and teaches body alignment and choreography is simple and clear. Above all, he moves between classical explanations rooted in Chinese Medicine and Western, physiological-based explanations in an elegant and understandable manner. Here is the trailer from PBS:

One of the biggest puzzles when you learn Tai Chi is learning to feel the 4 main energies: Peng, Lu, Ji, and An. The question of how to manifest the energies has come up for my students again as they work on the Tai Chi Mastery Program and discuss commencement in our Inner Form training group. It’s hard enough for most of us, perpetually stuck in our heads, to reconnect to our bodily sensations by feel, to relax muscles, loosen joints, and release our nerves.

After teaching thousands of people of all ages and physical abilities over the last eight years, it is clear to me that there is one technique in Tai Chi that is more powerful than all others. My main teacher, Bruce Frantzis, introduced me to this technique and taught me how to use all its variations, under different conditions. He has encouraged all his instructors to pass along this technique because it is practically a lost art.

Are you a busy person who wants to learn techniques to become calmer and to reduce your levels of stress? Are you interested in gaining strength, improving your balance and generally becoming more flexible? If so, you will want to begin learning and practicing the ancient art of Tai Chi. It’s important that you find a good teacher with an excellent reputation to help you learn Tai Chi, like from a Bruce Frantzis Tai Chi book or DVD or through one of his certified instructors.

Lately, I’ve been feeling a strong tension between the outer form and the inner essence of practices like Tai Chi and qigong. One student presented this dilemma to me because he was trying to figure out what to practice. With limited practice time, he had too many different forms and didn’t know how to pick between them. I told him that he should have a balanced practice based on the attributes that each form develops, or express the full range of energetic principles at his disposal – some hard, some soft, some integrated and smooth.

As part of the Tai Chi Mastery Program, Bruce Frantzis recently published a report called “The Eight Principles of Tai Chi Chuan.” The report is full of detail about stages of training 8 different energies of Tai Chi, laid out in clear and straightforward language. But I always have a problem with writing like this…. On the one hand, it is invaluable for anyone who wants to understand the bigger context of their Tai Chi practice.

Last week, I asked you about stressful situations and many of you shared your responses to the Most Stressful Interaction of Your Week. Thank you for taking the time to respond. I hope the guided practice sessions I sent you in return helped bring some relaxation into your life. This week, I want to dive into some of the themes of those interactions and show you how Tai Chi, specifically the two-person interactive practices called Push Hands, trains you to respond to them.

In response to Transforming Conflict with Tai Chi, many of you sent me stories of situations where you were forced into a tense encounter and you had to draw on your practice to get you through it. After, you feel relief and you can move on, but sometimes the idea slips through that, “hey, I’m a little better able to handle this kind of thing because of the way I faced it.