Even if you have cultivated a daily practice that takes you into deep relaxation, it’s helpful to have a set of stress reduction techniques “that work in 5 minutes or less.” You can pull these out during the day when you have a few minutes of downtime. If you are busy and really stressed out, these relaxation techniques can prevent your stress level from going through the roof. Try them and let me know what you think.
As a Tai Chi teacher trying to educate people about relaxation, I come across some pretty common misconceptions. Which of the following two ways is how you think about your personal energy levels? Your answer will determine how well you can achieve whole body relaxation: Couch Potato Model of Relaxation – How many people try to bust their butts during the day only to come home and completely crash at night?
People often ask me if tai chi is good for losing weight. If they’re asking whether tai chi is a substitute for running or lifting weights, the answer is usually “no”. When someone has been really injury or hasn’t exercised in a long time, tai chi can get you back on your feet and moving pain free. For these folks, tai chi can be a safe first step towards more demanding exercise.
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.
Most of the practice tips on this blog are about setting good practice habits in motion, but bad habits, like poor breathing, need to be disrupted too. The tools you use to disrupt bad habits are the same ones you use to create good practice habits: Make the “when” and “how” of your practice highly contextual: “On Tuesday, I will practice for 15 minutes between meetings in my office, so that I can feel more energized as I head into the afternoon.
