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Here’s my Week 2 update. Some big milestones this week: group 1 finished the form and group 2 has been languishing in the purgatory that is holding static postures. Check it out:

Inner Form vs. Outer Form In the two groups, we’re doing very different things. The group one just finished the form this week. So on Thursday after they finished it, we came in Friday, and it was a really interesting dividing line.

We’re a week into the Wu Tai Chi short form instructor training in Brighton, UK, with Lineage Holder Bruce Frantzis. So far we’ve been completely rebuilding our forms, working on Tai Chi leg power, and exploring the meditative aspects of the art. Check it out:

On Rebuilding Your Form: It’s crazy when you come at these things, you’re completely rebuilding your Tai Chi form. We’re about two-thirds of the way through the form and it feels so different.

In class the other day, a student asked me what kind of chi gung (qigong) we study. She said a friend of hers had been learning a different form and they wanted to compare notes. This is always an interesting conversation, because the term “qigong” covers a lot of different forms of exercise. Literally, it means “energy development” or “energy cultivation”. The chief aim of any qigong practice is to develop your natural energy levels, making your energy, or chi, smoother, increasing your capacity to move it through your system or using it for specific applications, like martial arts or meditation.

I asked my friend and fellow qigong practitioner Catherine Chenoweth to talk a little bit about her experience using qigong to manage a chronic health condition. Here’s what she had to say:

When I was released from the hospital in 1996, it was after three months, and with a diagnosis of LAM (Lymphangioleiomyomatosis), a rare, progressive, untreatable and often fatal lung disease. I asked a friend who was well versed in alternative treatments what I should do for my health, and his response, immediate and emphatic, was “You need to do qigong!

I learned everything I know about practicing qigong from my wife. Or I should say, from watching my wife make magic in the kitchen! If you saw us cooking together, you’d see her doing everything right and me doing everything wrong. When I started to practice qigong the way she cooks, my whole qigong world changed. Let me tell you how. What I do: I read every recipe word for word and line by line.

In 2005 I started running Brookline Tai Chi. It was a big jump in responsibilty and workload, so I needed a practice that would match the new intensity. In turned to Xingyi for energy, drive, and focus:

Practicing Tai Chi or Chi Gung on the beach feels great, once you get past the funny looks and comments from passers-by! If you want to make the most out of your practice time on the beach, or in any other natural setting, you have to practice a little differently than you do during indoor practice.

Here’s how: Take Extra Time to Settle In: Start by doing a little more quiet sitting or standing, “

Lower back pain can be a frustrating experience whose source may be hard to pin down and whose remedy may seem elusive. I hope that as you read through this article, you can start to understand the nature of pain a little differently. I’ll also show you some tai chi concepts that can help you unravel your lower back pain, and more importantly, how to search for a solution for your individual situation.