Every six months or so, one of our Senior Instructors at Brookline Tai Chi tells me that he’s had an amazing revelation about how to do the kwa squat. The kwa squat is one of the very first things we teach, he’s been doing Tai Chi for 40 years, and he gets new insight into it all the time. Amazing, right? Tai Chi and Back Pain One of the reasons we get so interested in this exercise is its power to relieve pressure on the spine and open up important joints of the body.
I want to thank Paul Brennan for making translations of classic Tai Chi texts available online. Please visit his site and let him know we all appreciate the awesome work he’s doing. In THE TAIJI BOXING OF MR. WU JIANQUAN - FOR SELF-STUDY, by Chen Zhenmin & Ma Yueliang, published by the Health Magazine Society, May, 1935, translation by Paul Brennan, May, 2012, the authors explain the foundational body mechanics of Tai Chi.
In issue 48 of Qi Magazine, there is an article about Wu Style Tai Chi Master Wang Hao Da. The article describes Master Wang’s early training and his desire to interact with as many different people as possible to refine his art. The description of Zhong Ding, or Central Equilibrium, drawn from the article, explains much of what organized Master Wang’s teaching and personal practice, as described to me by one of my teachers, Robert Tangora.
Recently, I received a question about qigong practices for spinal health. I am always looking for ways to keep my body healthy inside and out. I practice yoga, I do my daily cardio and some weight training. I am especially interested in keeping my spine healthy. I am 57 and am concerned about osteoporosis which runs in my family. Anything you could share with me would be greatly appreciated. There are some pretty sophisticated spinal health techniques in Qigong and Tai Chi, but the progression is basically this:
This winter, PBS is airing a special one-hour introduction to Tai Chi with David-Dorian Ross. I highly recommend watching the episode, whether you have a lot or a little Tai Chi experience. The way Ross presents basic concepts and teaches body alignment and choreography is simple and clear. Above all, he moves between classical explanations rooted in Chinese Medicine and Western, physiological-based explanations in an elegant and understandable manner. Here is the trailer from PBS:
One of the biggest puzzles when you learn Tai Chi is learning to feel the 4 main energies: Peng, Lu, Ji, and An. The question of how to manifest the energies has come up for my students again as they work on the Tai Chi Mastery Program and discuss commencement in our Inner Form training group. It’s hard enough for most of us, perpetually stuck in our heads, to reconnect to our bodily sensations by feel, to relax muscles, loosen joints, and release our nerves.
After teaching thousands of people of all ages and physical abilities over the last eight years, it is clear to me that there is one technique in Tai Chi that is more powerful than all others. My main teacher, Bruce Frantzis, introduced me to this technique and taught me how to use all its variations, under different conditions. He has encouraged all his instructors to pass along this technique because it is practically a lost art.
Lately, I’ve been feeling a strong tension between the outer form and the inner essence of practices like Tai Chi and qigong. One student presented this dilemma to me because he was trying to figure out what to practice. With limited practice time, he had too many different forms and didn’t know how to pick between them. I told him that he should have a balanced practice based on the attributes that each form develops, or express the full range of energetic principles at his disposal – some hard, some soft, some integrated and smooth.
