As part of the Tai Chi Mastery Program, Bruce Frantzis recently published a report called “The Eight Principles of Tai Chi Chuan.” The report is full of detail about stages of training 8 different energies of Tai Chi, laid out in clear and straightforward language. But I always have a problem with writing like this…. On the one hand, it is invaluable for anyone who wants to understand the bigger context of their Tai Chi practice.
Next month I’ll be teaching at Enso Tai Chi. If you’re in the Chicago area, come by to and learn how to go deeper into the internal work of your Tai Chi practice. Here’s what we’ll be focusing on:
Seminar Details Date: Saturday, November 10 Time: 10:00am - 12:30pm and 2:00 - 4:00pm Cost: $65 Pre-requisite: Open to all Tai Chi styles Location: Enso Studio, 412 S.
Last week, I asked you about stressful situations and many of you shared your responses to the Most Stressful Interaction of Your Week. Thank you for taking the time to respond. I hope the guided practice sessions I sent you in return helped bring some relaxation into your life. This week, I want to dive into some of the themes of those interactions and show you how Tai Chi, specifically the two-person interactive practices called Push Hands, trains you to respond to them.
In response to Transforming Conflict with Tai Chi, many of you sent me stories of situations where you were forced into a tense encounter and you had to draw on your practice to get you through it. After, you feel relief and you can move on, but sometimes the idea slips through that, “hey, I’m a little better able to handle this kind of thing because of the way I faced it.
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:
Movement can be a powerful tool for creating a calm mind, but only when you follow some very specific rules. Tai Chi was designed with these specific movement rules because the goal is to take you from tense to relaxed and from relaxed to vital and strong. When my Tai Chi teacher, Bruce Frantzis explains the learning progression for Tai Chi, he makes it clear that when your primary focus is on the mind, and your goal is to calm your mind, you must follow this progression.
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.
When you really find the groove with your Tai Chi practice, it’s like listening to a piece of music. The rhythms, riffs, and notes phase in and out, sometimes blending, and sometimes really standing out on their own, and even though there’s a lot going on, you can soak it all in at once. Can you practice Tai Chi the same way? This isn’t just an analogy, there’s a major lesson buried in here.
