I was talking to a friend last night about standing qigong and different meditation traditions that we had both tried. When we say “meditation” in this context, we were including all practices like breathing for relaxation, Tai Chi, qigong, and sitting practices too. Part of what I’d like to hear from you (see below) is how you define “meditation” in a way that’s practical and part of your everyday life.
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.
So, I know I’m writing this on vacation where the most pressing decision we make each day is whether to hike, kayak, or swim, but I’m going to go ahead anyway and recommend that you practice twice a day. Here’s why…
What I Learned from a Month-Long Tai Chi Intensive After a month in England, practicing 10 hours a day at the Short Form Instructor Training this summer, I have a renewed appreciation for daily practice rhythm.
Having the luxury of a full month of training this summer has made me step back and reflect on my own personal practice over the last 13 years. I tried to put together some of what this process has been like for me and sum it up here. I’m curious to know what you think. Have you gone through periods of practicing without a teacher? Have you had times where you’ve made huge strides in your practice?
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!
From the recent practice survey we conducted at Brookline Tai Chi and experiments I’ve been running in online learning, it’s become clearer and clearer to me that most people need some external motivation when they are learning a new skill. That’s not a judgment about willpower and motivation, it actually says more about the way we are wired for survival. In Z Health, we always talk about the way that the nervous system is at once the most plastic system – it can adapt to lots of different changes – and also the most stable.
Every time I circle back to extended periods of posture-holding, I find all kinds of new layers in my practice. Lately, I’ve been holding Single Whip. I was shooting some other videos and I thought, “why not see what happens over those 30 minutes”. I had a mic on, so whenever I changed focus or felt some big internal shift, I made a comment. The end result, condensed down to 3:30, includes minute markers for each of the changes.
