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.
Next month I’ll be teaching at Enso Tai Chi. If you’re in the Chicago area, come by to and learn how to go deeper into the internal work of your Tai Chi practice. Here’s what we’ll be focusing on:
Seminar Details Date: Saturday, November 10 Time: 10:00am - 12:30pm and 2:00 - 4:00pm Cost: $65 Pre-requisite: Open to all Tai Chi styles Location: Enso Studio, 412 S.
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.
At the center of Tai Chi practice, you cultivate your ability to listen – to your own internal state, to the energy of other people, and to the world around you. When it comes to interaction, and intense interaction like conflict, your internal state matters. The very first lesson you learn in Tai Chi Push Hands is that the outcome of an interaction is determined by your reaction, your internal state – whether you manifest tension or relaxation.
One aspect of Tai Chi that tends to get overlooked is testing. I don’t mean testing for rank or belts. I mean testing the smoothness of your nervous system that should be evolving as you go deeper into your practice. In this video, Tai Chi Master Bruce Frantzis demonstrates an exceptional degree of smoothness. Even though he is demonstrating a Ba Gua rolling exercise, all of the internal arts aim to cultivate this degree of fluidity:
