Tai Chi

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.” Focus on small chunks of skill: “As I do my qigong form, I will focus on how the weight-shifting connects my feet to the floor.” Finally, leave yourself wanting more. If you always finish a practice session feeling like you’re not burnt out, but actually a little bit hungry for more practice, you’re going to crave your next practice session. Over time, you create a practice snowball, where the little doses of highly contextual practice add up to a greater inner drive to practice, more practice stamina, and the ability to focus on meaningful aspects of your practice. This is the best path to acquiring new skills. ...

Implementing a breathing practice that has an impact on your energy levels and actually chips away at stress can be tricky. It requires a blend of persistence and relaxation that can seem like a paradox at first. That’s why I recommend the 20-20-20 Rule (which I made up) for better breathing. I explain the 20-20-20 Rule in this clip, pulled from the breathing course in my Foundations of Relaxation series:

I’m running a little experiment right now at Brookline Tai Chi to see if we can help our students develop better home practice habits. Specifically, I’m experimenting with self-reporting and automated reminders to spark daily practice sessions outside of class. Now, when I talk to other people in our international tai chi community, I realize what a powerful practice aid Brookline Tai Chi already is. What I mean is, the bricks-and-mortar experience of coming to the school and being around other people removes so many barriers people have to doing tai chi. It sounds too obvious to mention, but that is exactly why participating at the school is such a powerful way to build a practice. ...

Update: We’ve just released a new video-based course that shows you how to loosen up your hips and become stronger and more flexible! [CSSBUTTON target="/fix-your-frozen-hips/" color=“66ff33”]Check It Out[/CSSBUTTON] Original Post: I know the weather is getting warmer, but as I look around, all I see are frozen hips. We just aren’t a squatting culture. We sit in chair, couches, cars. Look around the room you are in right now and see how all the furniture is designed. ...

I’m not talking about a polygon with triangular faces or a marketing scam to rope your friends in. I’m talking about The Pyramid Method, laid out by Cal Newport on his blog, Study Hacks. Newport tells the story of a friend of a friend’s journey to becoming a professional hip-hop artist. The key, he claims, was that the friend, Chris, followed the Pyramid Method – named for the hip-hop club, The Pyramid, where he honed his craft. Chris went back to the Pyramid again and again and as he worked his way to becoming the undisputed champ of their weekly rap battles, he polished all the different facets of his hip-hop game. This is the essence of Newport’s method. From the post where he tells Chris’s story: ...

Bone Rhythm is a core concept taught in Z Health and I’ve found it to be one of the single most important teaching tools I have when it comes to getting people moving. The idea is very simple, that each bone is a rigid structure and because of that, when one end moves, the other must move. Now, the question of how the other end moves is what matters here. When the two ends of the bone move correctly relative to each other, you have smooth, effortless movement. When they move in the wrong way, you force the joints to move improperly and your timing is off. You can apply this concept to any movement, using any bone in the body, which is a fascinating experiment, but let me start with a simple movement to illustrate the concept. Forgive me for the photos! ...

1. You’re lazy Think about your daily movement patterns. How much variety is there? If you drive to work to sit at a desk and then relax by coming home and watching TV, you’re living your life essentially seated in front of a screen. You need to change up the patterns: stand, run, twist, bend and move, not just your body but your eyes and head too. ...

People often ask why we do chi gung sets in certain numbers. Whenever I’ve heard Bruce Frantzis answer that question, he tells a story about these elaborate experiments they run in the Taoist monasteries, over generations, with control groups and varying repetitions, to see what the optimal number of repetitions for each exercise is. I always feel bad for the monks who spent their lives doing a few too many of each exercise. ...

Here are some brief tutorials. After you view them, be sure to actually get up and try them! Joint Mobility

It’s been on my mind a lot in the past month that Brookline Tai Chi is approaching its 20th anniversary. With a rough calculation, that also means that we are approaching having taught 10,000 students in that time span. I can’t decide which one of those milestones is going to look better on the big banner out front. How about “10,000 People Relaxed”? In light of reaching these major institutional marks, I’ve also been wondering about the underlying mechanisms that have given the school such an amazing run so far. Surely, with this longevity, there have to be elements of the Brookline Tai Chi experience that transcend any one individual teacher, staff member or student. Then I came across the concept of Core Human Drives, from the Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman. ...