When a baseball player drives a home run out of the park, the power that they use comes directly from the legs and is manifested in the hips. The same is true of most athletic sports. If a competitor has weak legs they often cannot rise to the challenge. The legs are our foundation and we have the same relationship with them that a tree has with its roots. The deeper, stronger the root, the better able the tree is to withstand adverse conditions and the longer the tree lives.

When practicing Tai Chi it is extremely important to establish this connection between the legs and the hips. This area is the meeting place between the lower and upper part of the body, a sort of biological cloverleaf, through which all of our bodies resources travel. There are numerous ways to strengthen the legs by making the connection to the hips. Form practice using sets like the Taoist Spine Stretch, Rooted Shifting, Super slow Squats and Tai Chi Cat Walking are all very effective.

But one of the best ways to build leg strength is from simple standing. By using Tai Chi Standing Meditation or Long Standing Qigong sessions you will be accomplishing two goals at once. The first is to build the strength, which is built from endurance in this case, and the second is to gain more practice at meditation. The physical stress of prolonged standing will definitely build the muscles but the meditation allows you to develop an inner link and visualize the power flowing into your body. Along with reestablishing connections in the body, prolonged standing also builds new connections, increasing the flow of available energy to the dantien and throughout the body to the other meridians.

When westerners exercise the focus is usually on the upper body. But while you can turn and swivel the upper body without turning the legs, when the legs turn, the rest of the body turns with them. The direction of the hips is the direction that the upper body must face or it will have to twist unnaturally, blocking not only blood flow but energy channels as well. When the channels and meridians are opened up the body's needs are more easily met because there is more energy available to work with.