Tai Chi

In this Inner Form office hours clip, Nate asked me about a specific issue on breathing in the Marriage of Heaven and Earth qigong. If your main focus is Tai Chi, then I would recommend that you pretty much ignore breathing as you practice, but you should focus on opening up the body enough to facilitate deep, even, smooth breathing. In the following clips, we look at how opening up the body will lead to deeper breathing, what stages you will go through in this process, and finally, I show him a specific technique for keeping the deep internal connections loose as he does the Marriage of Heaven and Earth qigong. ...

_This is a guest post from my friend and fellow instructor, Paul Cavel. I asked Paul to talk a little bit about his experience teaching all over Europe and what he’s learned after nearly 20 years doing it. There are some great insights here about the internal energy arts that you can apply to your own practice, whether you teach or not. Take note when he talks about practice mindset! _ ...

One of the most counter-intuitive feelings in qigong, Tai Chi, or Ba Gua is the way that making more space inside the body allows you open more outwardly as well. In these two Inner Form office hours video clips, I show Brendan how making more space in the kwa and shoulder’s nest can help her take a more connected step in her circle walking practice and develop a more fluid single palm change. ...

Recently, on the Insight Taiji Facebook group, we got into a fascinating discussion about the challenges of teaching and the different kinds of student expectations that come across as teachers. As much as this was framed as a teacher’s dilemma, I felt that I came away with some lessons about how I set my own expectations as a student as well. Anthony Court has been studying systems of health, healing, meditation and self-defense for over 41 years. He has taught and given workshops in Britain and Southern Ireland, and holds regular classes in Wales. Anthony started the discussion with this reflection: ...

When you see a series of exercises, you can either look at what’s common to all of them, or how they are different. In this video, I go through several variations of turning exercises, where I’m using the connection between the legs and the spine to drive body movement. Most people will look at the arms in each exercise and say, “those are not the same movements” and that’s true, but they would be missing the most important part: how the legs turn the body. ...

Twisting, especially the legs, is one of those techniques that sounds really cool, but it easy to overdo. Going slow and steady with twisting can help everything loosen up. My advice: at first work on feeling what naturally happens rather than trying to make something happen. Develop sensitivity. In this “office hours” clip, we look at twisting the legs in Cloud Hands and troubleshoot some of her stuck spots. We went on to explore the “rings” of the legs, which are horizontal bands of tissue running around the legs. At first, when you work with the rings, you use them as markers for developing better feeling awareness of the soft tissue. Later on, the rings can be adjusted, increasing their internal or external rotation, to fine-tune your leg alignments. ...

In part 1 of this interview, we talked to Dr. Mark Cheng about how his background as an acupuncturist, martial artist, strength coach and PhD in Chinese Medicine has shaped his point of view about the broader subject of fitness and wellness. Now he’s going to explain his thinking behind developing a project, called Tai Cheng, which aims to introduce Tai Chi to a much larger fitness audience. ...

In this “office hours” post, Nate asked me about kwa work in Tai Chi. Specifically, we were looking at movements where you squat in a front stance. The question is figuring out how low to go and why. In Tai Chi, you use your kwa to control your movements. At first, think of your kwa as simply the fold in your hip joint. In the following video, though, I explain how your understanding, and use, of the kwa changes as you learn to work deeper into the body. ...

Dr. Mark Cheng compares learning Tai Chi to studying a well-cut diamond, and as you’ll see in the following conversation, his background as an acupuncturist, martial artist, strength coach and PhD in Chinese Medicine actually allows him to look at the broader subject of fitness and wellness in the same multi-faceted way. With the depth and range he brings to teaching movement, it’s no wonder that he’s leading the way to introducing Tai Chi to a much larger fitness audience and in the process, asking all Tai Chi people to step back and take a fresh look at their art. ...

Trained in Evolutionary Biology, Peter Wayne, Ph.D., has spent the last 12 years in medical research and more than 35 years studying and teaching Tai Chi. He now serves as Research Director for the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine jointly based at the Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where a primary focus of his research is studying the clinical and physiological impacts of Tai Chi on health. ...