Allow me to share with you a Tai Chi principle so simple and clear that it is often overlooked, even by practitioners who have been doing Tai Chi for 10 years or more. The Five Movement Centers is a template for understand HOW you move and applying it to any form you know or any repetitive movement you can perform, like going for a walk, is going to have a serious impact on how grounded, fluid, and connected you feel.
When my first Tai Chi teacher, Bruce Frantzis, came back to the US forty years ago to spread the Tai Chi he learned in China, he found out that many basic Tai Chi concepts were not being taught, either because of communications issues or lack of knowledge. Only a fraction of the vast potential of the art was being shared. Bruce set out to teach the Inner Form of Tai Chi and that’s what I have studied for the last 15 years.
If you listed to the recent Qigong Radio episode on Rooting, Central Equilibrium, and Balance, you probably want more insight into how to put Tai Chi balance training to work in your practice. Now you can start Tai Chi balance training with our new eBook, “An Introduction to Rooting and Stability,” where you will take the Tai Chi Way to re-gaining, one of life’s simplest yet most essential treasures–the gift of balance.
In a recent post, we looked at 5 Ways to Build Strong Legs. When I posted the video to Youtube, someone replied: I think nowadays there is a great misunderstanding of internal martial arts goals and methodology. The great issue is not to become strong but to become very weak! Now, I think the commenter is kind of right, but misses a critical point, by simply reducing Tai Chi to the art of getting weaker and weaker.
In this episode of Qigong Radio, Don Miller and I explore the essential elements of Tai Chi Balance Training. As you probably know, Tai Chi is being used more and more for falls prevention programs for the elderly and becoming a mainstream part of the Western medical vocabulary. But what are the actual elements that make up a great Tai Chi balance training program? How can you use them for your own well-being?
We often talk about the way Tai Chi can improve your physical health and mental and emotional well-being from the point of view of the practitioner. But not everyone out there is as familiar with practical ways to use Tai Chi to support their health and wellness goals as you may be. Later this year, I’m thrilled to have the chance to share Tai Chi with physicians in a course at Harvard Medical School.
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:
As you cultivate the mind-body benefits of Tai Chi, you will likely focus on solo training and interactive two-person practices like Push Hands. There’s a third kind of Tai Chi training, though, that will make the link between the other two stronger, Tai Chi Equipment Training.
Using stones, balls, disks, belts, and other objects you find in nature, you can develop important attributes of the Tai Chi body and mind.
