When people explain the connection between the mind and the body in tai chi, they often use the breath as a bridge between the two. In other words, you can unite the mind and the body through breathing practices. This is true, but it’s only one technique. In fact, good tai chi includes several methods for making this link. Breathing is only the beginning. Here are a few other things you should be looking for:
The next time you go to class, watch out for these 4 practice partners. While they all start out with good intentions, if you hang out with them too much, you’ll get sucked into their quirky habits and slow down your own progress. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
- Checklist Charlie Checklist Charlie is the tai chi student who is forever stuck in his own head. Every time he practices, instead of feeling his body, he recites a list of stuff he is supposed to be doing.
Can you take 5 minutes to help me with a survey? I’m compiling a report on the state of Tai Chi. I want to know what teachers and practitioners think is important about their Tai Chi practice. We’re also trying to figure out where Tai Chi stacks up for people who don’t do Tai Chi, but have another movement/wellness practice. You can take the survey here and if you could help me spread the word about it too, that would be great.
As you explore layers of relaxation through standing qigong, you’ll hit a point where everything starts to feel fluid, as if you’ve dug down deep enough to find a rich aquifer, filled with nourishing water. We describe the experience with words like “sinking” and “soaking” the mind into the body, and that’s literally what’s happening. Remember the qigong expression, “your mind moves your chi and your chi moves your blood”? When they say “
Stability and flow seem to be at odds with each other. Stability can mean rigidity, or at least, it seems to conjure up something fixed, sturdy, and unmoving. Flow isn’t any of those things. It’s fluid and changing. So how does Energy Arts Senior Instructor Craig Barnes blend the two so seamlessly?
Recently, Craig taught a workshop about awakening energetic sensitivity, drawn from principles of Dragon and Tiger Qigong. We worked a lot on the opening of the set.
You can encourage your body to relax just by paying attention to it the right way. Using standing qigong, you can build up a relaxation feedback loop between your feeling awareness and the body’s natural ability to soften when circulation improves. The qigong expression, drawn from Chinese medicine, is, “your mind moves your chi and your chi moves your blood”. In the first lesson on standing qigong, we worked on creating a buffer between “
Check out the updated “Code of Practice”. These are the rules you need to follow to make sure your practice is energizing, nourishing and rewarding in the long run. You must follow these rules 100% to the letter, unless you think that kind of rigidity violates either #2 and/or #4. Let me know what you think. Did I miss anything?
Do you include a “settling-in” phase each time you practice? If not, you’re wasting time and energy resolving issues from your day when you could be going deeper into your practice. A settling-in phase acts as a buffer between your busy day and the place you’d like your practice to take you.
Standing qigong is one of the best buffers between “real life” and “practice time”. You could jump right into your tai chi form, but you’d need to do 10 or 15 minutes of “
