Tai Chi

I’m pretty excited about this: Eyes and Visual Training It’s my new online course and the first in the Foundations of Relaxation Series I wrote about here. As I’ve been developing the course, I keep saying to myself, “I wish everyone who comes to see me for pain relief or to learn tai chi did this first.” In fact, that’s how I developed the whole series. There are a few simple things that don’t take a lot of oversight or feedback from an instructor that everyone can do to move better (meaning more gracefully and in less pain). ...

I just started working with Bruce’s new meditation program. I’m very excited to hear him framing this home-study series in terms of rhythms, pacing, and long term development. Every couple of weeks he’s putting out new guided practice recordings, which I think will be easy to follow-through on and fresh enough to keep people tuned into their practice. I’ll let you know how it goes! Taoist Meditation Circle “Get out of your head and into your body.”

As a tai chi teacher and movement coach, I get to meet a lot of people who want to relax, slow down and have more energy for the things they love to do in life. But there’s a very common misconception that I encounter and I think it leads people to spend too much time chasing the wrong things when it comes to a relaxation practice. Hopefully, this series will begin to clarify what the best way to start a relaxation practice is and how to most efficiently get the results you want. ...

I care just as much about “how you practice” as “what you practice”. At a certain point, you should be paying attention to both equally. For your own practice, I think Dr. Cobb sums it up nicely here, where he describes the delicate balance between putting your head down and working hard and sitting back to reflect on your hard work. When you think about crafting a training experience for a student or client, you need to think about how you can, in the words of Dr. BJ Fogg, “put hot triggers in the path of motivated people.” ...

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This one is for the Energy Arts Certified Instructors. The new EA website allows you to change the details of your instructor profile when you have a registered account. I think having accurate and updated information is helpful, especially if you decide to become an active contributor on the forum.

Here’s a sneak peek at some online learning support I’m doing with a Tai Chi group in Farmington, Maine. I went up a couple weeks ago to teach an afternoon workshop and this was the practice set we did by the end. The workshop participants also have access to a private Q&A forum, so as they practice between now and the next live training, I can give them feedback. I’ll probably add some new videos as we go to answer any questions that come up. I also think it will be a useful way to pre-load content for the next workshop, i.e., if I can get them to learn some basic choreography before I arrive, we can spend our time focusing on refinements or more subtle internal principles that are best learned by feel. ...

Claude Hopkins, in Scientific Advertising: A Rapid stream ran by the writer’s boyhood home. The stream turned a wooden wheel and the wheel ran a mill. Under that primitive method, all but a fraction of the streams’ potentiality went to waste. Then someone applied scientific methods to that stream – put in a turbine and dynamos. Now, with no more water, no more power, it runs a large manufacturing plant. ...

I keep learning and re-learning this lesson. Be very careful about calling someone, or even thinking about someone as a “former student”. Of course, at BTC, we tend to think that way all the time. We work hard to keep people in classes, and when students don’t come back, it’s very easy to see the enrollment numbers, not the people behind them. Why don’t people come back? See? Even asking the question that way makes it seem like a “yes/no” distinction. Are you a student? Are you not? That’s completely the wrong way to approach the issue! ...

In a recent post, I asked the question “Can you learn qigong (or any movement art) online?” The answer was a big fat qualified “yes.” I think there is a limited role that online resources can play in your movement education — even though movement is something best learned through live human interaction. So the question for you, as a movement coach, is not whether or not you can teach online, the question is “what is the appropriate way to use online resources in my movement education business?” ...