Tai Chi

As you know from other episodes of Qigong Radio and other interviews, I always try to track down authoritative sources when I want to learn more about a subject and share it with you. Now that my teacher Bruce Frantzis is releasing two more DVD sets on Xingyi’s Five Elements, I wanted to talk to someone about these practices. To the best of my knowledge, Isaac Kamins is the only person actively teaching the Energy Arts Xingyi curriculum who also trained with Bruce Frantzis in weekly classes for several years in the Bay Area in the 90’s. ...

When you set out to learn Taoist Energy Arts like Tai Chi, qigong, or meditation, you come across the lore of masters with supernatural abilities or techniques too deadly to teach openly. Or more insidious, we grasp after images of unattainable perfection, always slightly beyond reach, unless we just find the right technique or are initiated into a secret practice. And even if we’ve given up silly kung fu fantasies of flying through the bamboo reeds, on a subtle level we still chase ideas and dreams that only live in the mental realm. ...

Inspiration for Rooting and Lengthening in Chicago On November 9, I’ll be teaching a seminar for my friend Chris Cinnamon at Enso Tai Chi (registration details here). This year we’ll continue the “Put More Chi in Your Tai Chi” theme that we started last year by focusing on Tai Chi Rooting, Sinking Chi, Dissolving, and more. The goal is to give everyone a clear sense of how nourishing it can be to find your root and feed it through solo exercises and interactive partner practice. Basically, you learn to continuously release and dissolve tension, stress, and pain, but more than just shedding uncomfortable feelings, you actually tap into a restorative wellspring of energy that keeps bubbling up the more you go down into it. ...

When you read the Tai Chi Classics and look at photos of the old masters, everything looks graceful, flowing, and full of life. The problem is, your daily practice can be full of aches, pains, kinks, binds and the feeling that you’re never really going to get it. There is a lot of territory between, “oh man, it hurts, I’ll never get past it” and “be still like a mountain, flowing like a great river” that isn’t discussed in the Tai Chi Classics or most books on Tai Chi. They tend to just give you the gold standard for where you want to go, with not a lot of detail about what it’s like to travel that road. ...

If you remember the original Star Wars® movie it is probably easy to remember the ‘droid C3PO and his strange gait. This android lacked the proper joint arrangement to move in a proper way, which made his walk seem stiff and difficult. But while his spine seemed stiff his knees worked quite well. The reason for this seeming anomaly is that the proper functioning of the knee is critical to effective movement. If the foot strikes the ground at the heel it causes a minor shock all the way up the body. Springy knees allow the foot to hit the ground in a less extreme manner, cushioning the blow by enlarging the area of surface contact. ...

People fall. The fall might be caused by a slip or trip or even an inner ear imbalance. Normally when we think someone falling we think of either the elderly or very young children still finding their balance. But according to the World Health Organization (WHO) falls are much more of a problem for all ages than most people realize. The organization said: · Nearly half a million people globally die from falls each year. · Falls are the second leading cause of unintentional injury death. · 80% of deadly falls happen in low to middle income homes · The largest group to be affected by falls are people 65 years or older · There are 37.3 million falls each year that require medical attention The various movement arts, such as tai chi and qigong, are being increasingly used in treatment regimens in Western hospitals however. One of the most effective exercises in these arts is Bend the Bow Spinal Qigong. This exercise is used to strengthen and regenerate the spine by incorporating neigong components and controlling the bodies natural healing energies. ...

When we watch groups of tai chi students practicing in the park most of us wonder how such slow gentle movements can possibly have any effect on us, besides being a waste of time. But during the last 3 decades the medical and medical research communities have discovered that these apparently useless movements are actually extremely therapeutic. A 2006 study conducted at Harvard, reported in the May 2009 issue of Harvard Women's Health Watch, found that tai chi was a nearly perfect form of exercise because it can be safely practiced by students at nearly any age. ...

Everyone falls at one time or another and, as we age, the possibility of losing our balance and falling victim to an injury causing fall increases. The fact is that even something small like wax buildup in our ears can cause problems balancing and disorders such as Parkinson ’s disease and osteoporosis. The Western medical community has many treatments for the diseases themselves but when a person falls, especially an elderly person, that person loses confidence in their ability to not fall. This mindset is never addressed in Western ttherapeutic environments. ...

Sometimes people in the West, mostly because of their mechanistic world view, have a hard time catching up. In the early 1970's NASA decided that it needed a pen that would write in zero gravity. After spending tens of millions of dollars they were finally able to invent one. The Russian space program simply used a pencil. We have two problems: We over think problems and we only look at surface appearances before making decisions. The Chinese have been using Tai Chi as a healing art for more than 30 centuries but even now many Westerners only think of old Bruce Lee movies when they see someone doing sets. ...