Blog • Blue Tiger Tai Chi

What is it about Tai Chi?

Tai chi has become much more popular in the West since I began my study almost 50 years ago. Still, it seems mysterious and seemingly difficult to fathom for many. My aim is to provide the curious, the interested and the devoted alike, a clear way to experience the highly practical and accessible principles available to us through the practice of this art.

Mel and Kate 1 - 2MB
The fundamentals are essentially simple. We learn to relax and focus. We discover a grounding – available through relaxed alignment. Then, we learn to move while maintaining our balance. Opening ourselves to this type of mindful awareness in action provides a catalyst for a shift in perspective and in approach to life. The physical relaxation, alignment and openness also provide multiple health and wellness benefits as we learn to let go of stress and feel our life energy circulate freely within our body. The grounded relaxation and enhanced awareness reveal for us the innate courage we have to open our hearts and connect with all.

The tools I use are tai chi form, qigong and partner exercises from the lineage of Cheng Man-Ch’ing (Zheng Manqing) influenced by related work from The Arica School®.

The Hidden Gem of Tai Chi

Tai Chi practice is a gift we can give ourselves and share with others around us. It brings relaxation, joy and a boost to our vitality. It works through conscious movement and, following basic principles, offers a way to ground ourselves, eliminating unintentional stressful habits and body dynamics that can cause us harm. It is gentle, and through practice can return our bodies to a natural open alignment with gravity. An added benefit is, while studying with others, it can offer a sense of community and connection as we learn to move together in harmony.
After we have begun to embody its core principles and alignment, Tai Chi Chuan goes on to offer a practice that truly is the hidden gem. It is the partner practice of sensing hands. This practice gives us a physical way to maintain our relaxation even under the emotional pressure of close contact and find the same harmonious connection as in the form practice. We learn how to connect without freezing, pushing or running. It also presents experiential (and visible) feedback on our ego tendencies and habits. Cooperative practice can soothe us into a relaxed response to the world. The benefits of cooperation and mutual support far surpass what can be achieved in a competitive atmosphere. In cooperative practice we learn empathy, compassion and understanding. Fostering the cooperative atmosphere in partner work requires clear intention based on an understanding that we will each learn and embody more when we embrace supporting each other through our challenges. We can come to see each other as helpful mirrors, often showing us exactly what we get to discover and change in ourselves.
The intention we need is one of willingness to participate in an activity which will promote change in our point of view and our physical actions. We also get to establish an agreement with our partners to support each other in our learning, even and especially when it is difficult. This is essential. Although these skills can be learned in a more old-school competitive environment, that style is not suited to all. Working together is something that we all can achieve.
First we agree to support each other, gently discovering our own and our partners’ imbalanced over-reactions. The practice involves employing the fundamental principles of Tai Chi:
● Dantian awareness
● Relaxed alignment
● Rooted relaxation
● Full body action while in connection
● and constant free mobility
As we practice we will deepen our understanding and embodiment of the basics as we learn to respond from a full body awareness. The key principle is to discover that we can ‘get out of our heads’ and trust the knowledge in our body. We learn to work from dantian awareness which guides our body to respond as a whole while maintaining a relaxed grounding.
These basics are brought forward from our solo and group practice where we gradually awaken the dantian awareness that among other things gives us the sense of our whole body as one.

We are no longer racing through our thoughts trying to remember the parts. We also gradually let go of thought based strategizing in favor of simple present awareness and response.
How do you do it? First you have to set your intention to be patient with yourself. Recognize that although you may be able to conceptualize how, you will need to experience how. That means leaving behind the ideas and instructions while you focus in the dantian to feel from the inside (rather than think about it from the outside).
1. Learn, by practicing how to find your root. This means softening your legs while aligning the bones to transmit the weight into the ground. You don’t actually have to hold yourself up. When rooting happens clearly, down through one foot, the other foot feels empty and free. There are phases here, root exists in any weight distribution, but ‘single-weighting’ is the clearest start. It is also essential for free movement of the feet.
2. Your relaxation will happen most easily from the top down. It feels like emptying your upper body of heaviness. Let your shoulders, arms and hands relax. Feel the weight of your arms traveling down through your body to the ground rather than outside your body.
3. Make sure that your body is untwisted. This takes a while, since any habitual postures we hold in our body, even unintentionally, become hard to perceive. You will begin to feel freer and emptier. Especially when you relax all around and within the pelvic cavity and loosen your hips, so they are free to move. To do this, we soften the legs (see point 1).
4. You will find that you habitually lean on yourself, often when feeling tired. Your challenge is to embrace the openness that comes from ‘unwinding’ and standing with relaxed alignment.
5. When it comes to moving the legs, practice moving from the dantian. That means moving the center of your body to move the feet. Release the legs so that they follow the movement of the center of your body (dantian) and travel with emptiness, free of stiffness.
6. Simultaneously, we learn to allow the arms to be moved in this same fashion, from the center. Although we have and constantly utilize muscular control of our arms independently, our challenge here is to let them be moved with only soft support and guidance from the muscles. In other words, we learn to move our body to move our hands. As it turns out, I have found this much harder to imagine than to actually accomplish. This is something to play with in your practice for sure, but also during your day. Notice that when combined with the previous phases it becomes much more free and precise. This is learning to let go of (muscular) force.
7. In moving practice with the forms we can discover the subtleties of momentum in our movements, all the while maintaining our rooted connection to our ground. We discover that fluid balanced movement is based on our vertical alignment rather than simply horizontal movement. The feeling is like moving down instead of horizontally. Or like keeping our weight below the floor while we move with complete freedom and lightness above.
This is the practice to prepare ourselves for partner work. When we work with a partner it is essential that we bring all these skills with us. They need to be embodied, because the stress of contact may very well blank our minds with an existential agitation that can completely unground us. Our challenge is to remain relaxed, connected and grounded.

● To practice this with a partner we must first deepen and stabilize the multi-facetted awareness available from the dantian. We don’t have time to remember our body intellectually. We get to be awake, in the moment, and able to respond in balance to what is actually happening.
● Greeting each other in a moment of recognition is an important step in helping to relieve the emotional stress of close contact. This is a moment to establish a bond of mutual trust.
● We learn how to follow the movements of our partner, while maintaining our awareness and balance.
● We learn how to move our point(s) of contact with our whole body center (ie. dantian), letting go of independent thought based arm movements in favor of dantian directed full body action.
● These skills can be developed practicing the ‘butterfly touch sensing hands exercise’.
● When we sufficiently embody these skills, we change to a different level of contact using the ‘4 ounce touch’. We continue with some single hand exercises and eventually the choreography changes to using two hands and more points of contact, while employing the same basic movement skills as before. Here we begin to discover that we can ground the pressure of another (our cooperative partner using only 4oz contact) through the same alignment we have learned to ground and relax our own weight in movement.
● We further develop the movement skills necessary to maintain substantial contact while redirecting the incoming force away from our center, without introducing force of our own.
● During this phase we begin to notice counterproductive tensions in both ourselves and our partners. This is the key moment of opportunity where we can exercise our intention to support and help our partner in this fascinating process of discovery of how to relax. With a softness of spirit and a gentle touch it becomes easy to help your partner notice their tension and, with a patient attitude, for us to recognize our own.
Push hands or sensing hands practice is a key part of what has been called ‘self-cultivation’ in the world of Tai Chi. The essential aspect is to cultivate a non-verbal, non-judgemental awareness available from the dantian. Awakening and stabilizing dantian awareness becomes the center of our Tai Chi practice. It is our physical access to a silent witness that can guide us through our ego reduction process and present the ground for accessing the higher states in us.
Thank you for your attention.
With love and respect,
– Greg Woodson, April 2024

Acknowledgements
• Thank you to Patrick Watson for his patient teaching, allowing for discovery, and his brilliant embodied demonstrations of Principle. He pointed out that we can be rooted in almost any position, but that alignment is the way to learn it.
• Thank you to Oscar Ichazo and the Integral Philosophy of his Arica School® of Knowledge which teaches extensive practice of Kath (dantian) awareness as the basis for grounding across all Realms to support the process of ego-reduction and as the basis for experiencing the Higher States of Consciousness.
• Thank you to Dr. Yang Yang for pointing out the simple possibility of relaxing and rooting while standing, sitting or lying down and demonstrating that root manifests in the alternate foot positions used in Chen style tai chi.
• Thank you to Ken Van Sickle who helped me to free my mind of particular interpretations of how I thought things should be done.

The Practice of Tai Chi

(This article was originally published in the T’ai Chi Foundation’s Teaching Forum)

Tai Chi is great practical knowledge of human mind-body balance needed in the current day. When studying taijiquan one moves through many stages, all of them engrossingly fun and challenging. There are many takeaways from this study, each of great value. One of the most important is that we learn that we can relax. Life gets better with relaxation. Our health improves, our balance, both physical and emotional improves and our spirit is nourished.

Teaching methods for this practice vary. Too much thought fools us into trying to think our way through it. What we actually need is to feel it in our bodies. Nonetheless, having a comprehensive understanding or roadmap is also truly valuable. It allows one to avoid the pitfalls of imaginative wishful thinking that can delay our actual embodiment of the basically simple (and tremendously challenging) principles involved. Taijiquan is a martial art, but the true value of the study goes far beyond any aspect of fighting. The principles that make it successful are the same that can help us move through life with harmony.

The basics are simple. We learn to find our footing on the earth and develop actual awareness of our feet on the ground. As we do, while relaxing the legs and the entire body, we then learn how to move without disturbing our ground. Gradually we develop a new awareness of our true strength. This is not the strength of muscle resistance, but one that comes from the ground. A simple analogy is that of the tenuous balance of a christmas tree, even one with a wide and stable base, compared to the stability of a live tree rooted in the earth. Our phases of learning can almost follow this analogy in that when we start we might have a small base. This increases. Then we start to develop root. Gradually it deepens the more we relax. Ultimately it brings nourishment up from the ground while the tree attracts the energy of the heavens. This leads to a fullness of emptiness, light and energy that only appears when we let go of tension and external strength of muscle resistance. We experience the alive energy of Qi in our body.

To take the internal strength-without-resistance (strength through softness) into the world, in movement, we must open the full functionality of our hip joints (referred to as the kua). We learn to turn and step utilizing the potentially free movement in these joints. This allows the alignment of the body to maintain the openness of a channel between the heavens and the earth. Alignment here, is another key principle often initially misunderstood as forceful straightening of the body, or holding a ‘correct’ position. Over time we learn that as we relax with the intention of hanging loose from the top, as if from a string from above, we open the channel to filling from below. This gives us a quality and presence that becomes a force for peace and harmonious interaction.

Now, there is another key piece that brings us back to the all important hip joints. In our form practice we develop our knowledge of the available territory under our feet. How to move smoothly from one foot to the other, when and how we can turn without compromising our balance or being stuck, all with the aware emptiness to interpret the needs of the moment.

The goal is to relax and observe these principles within ourselves – within our bodies. We become clear that this is not a thought process, but an awareness available to us via the dantian. Our root deepens, our energy increases and “the tree” becomes more bushy and full of life. Now there are lessons that we learn in interaction with others. In the challenge of working with a pushing partner, we discover that to maintain relaxed contact we must move the whole “tree” (from the center – the dantian) even while we avail ourselves of the subtlety of our articulated limbs. Quite often we can confuse softness, a concept which can seem foreign and elusive, with collapse and limpness. This is only natural, since our main paradigm for relaxation is collapsing on a couch. Practice of taijiquan leads us to a much more dynamic form of relaxation, one that we can take with us as we move through the world.

The martial teaching of taijiquan is one of non-opposition often described as getting out of the way of force. But truly it is more subtle than simple dodging. Instead, with relaxation we develop the ability to make and maintain contact with our partner with an open-hearted touch that neither offers resistant pressure, nor shrinks away in fear. The key factor involved in this (physical) contact is that we modulate it not so much with the articulation (and activity) of the arms, but with shifts in the center mass of the body and articulation in the legs. Just enough movement to still maintain contact without resistance. This happens in the context of a full awareness (dantian rather than thinking mind) of the terrain in which we can move. We must know where we are, where our feet are and maintain the sensation of rootedness with awareness of the space we inhabit physically.

To do this, we must establish a clear separation between our thinking mind and our physical kinesthetic awareness. Although the thinking mind is capable of understanding this process, its desire to analyze is far too slow to provide the appropriate answer in a moment of need for clear physical response. The emotions too play a part here. For if we react emotionally without the clarity of a relaxed response, we will always over-react. So, the emotions must be calmed as we relax and breathe. We utilize the mind to remember and direct our attention to the dantian awareness. The dantian awareness provides us a harmonious response as we maintain contact and preserve our own balance.

Six steps involved in successful sensing hands:

Mastery of the terrain (dantian awareness)
Development of root (sung)
Opening alignment – life all the way to the fingertips (peng)
Articulation of the key joints to allow continued relaxation (open responsive kua)
Calm, open-hearted connection and adherence (Love)
Harmonious softness of centered movement, response and following (empathy and compassion)

The psychological challenge of pushing hands is an opportunity to move towards transcendence of the existential angst of sadness, anger & fear. These manifest in our practice as judgement (freezing), fight and flight, the three ‘Fs’. The ground within which we practice is dantian awareness, the intention of promoting balance and pacification of conflict in service of the ultimate goal of a unified humanity. Our school, The School of T’ai Chi Chuan & T’ai Chi Foundation grows from and is dedicated to these principles. Each aspect of our practice reflects this and supports our core mission to provide a toolset for promoting health, harmony and peace in the world.

Our core activity has been and will continue to be working towards and bringing those interested into the full embodiment of Tai Chi, the supreme principle, as manifested across an embodiment of the practice of taijiquan. I dream also of the day when TCF’s major activity will be the outreach to a much larger segment of humanity (beyond taiji enthusiasts) to give access to the practical knowledge contained in this pursuit to all people in need.

Greg Woodson

The Value of Tai Chi Practice

Having a sequence to practice gives us easy access to the primary health benefits of tai chi – conscious movement with relaxation to encourage circulation of energy and body fluids. Practicing the form daily takes a short amount of time, which of course can be expanded with repetition.

Having a routine is the first step in moving to being in practice. Practice means taking the principles of tai chi into your life. To fully reveal the transformative potential of tai chi practice we get to discover and play with our rooted connection to the earth – a conceptual awareness, which only truly functions when it becomes an experiential awareness. When we feel it.

Having established a rooted connection to the earth, we then learn to move with it and our experience of the world and the space around us changes. This mindful awareness goes further in allowing us to witness our reactions to the world and consequently observe how they affect our balance.

So without going too far, the health benefits of a Tai Chi practice can be understood as: we integrate regular conscious, relaxed movement into our daily life and we begin to relax all day, decreasing stress levels in all of our activities.

From here we continue to build on the transformative aspects which are the true gems available to us from our Tai Chi embodiment. Grounded relaxation also includes our hands, key components of our expression system and contact with others. This leads to a change in how we connect with the world, our activities and our relationships.

The partner practice of Tai Chi gives us a clear place to witness how we (over)react in contact with one another and to practice allowing grounded response and connection instead. Learning that we alone are responsible for our (re)actions gives us the power to move from reaction to response. This can truly transform our relationships when we find the strength and courage in our own relaxation to open our hearts and allow change.

On Language Used Here

In my writings I use certain conventions to highlight particular aspects or qualities of the topics. First, since the language and names are often Chinese in origin, which has multiple systems of transliteration into English spelling, I use Pinyin, the current world standard. This has one major exception that is the name tai chi, which I feel is recognizable now as an English name for this form of practice.

When it comes to the practice of tai chi, the short form referencing taijiquan, I use lower-case. When discussing Tai Chi, the Supreme Ultimate principle, I use initial-cap so that it will stand out.

Why Push Hands?

(This article was originally published in the T’ai Chi Foundation’s Teaching Forum)

At different points during our study and training various apprentices and students have posed the question of why we practice push hands. There are as many answers to that question as there are benefits to the study of Tai Chi itself. We learn to accept ourselves, without sadness or judgement through conscious awareness of our body. We ground our emotions, especially anger, and learn to accept real connection with everyone. We cleanse ourselves of fear. We learn and share balance.

These are the ultimate benefits available from complete immersion in this study. Still, it doesn’t answer in detail why we spend time learning to recognize and interpret energy in others across this scenario of potential conflict. At least, not until we realize that what we perceive in our partners is really just a reflection of ourselves. When we approach this process as one of acceptance we discover that the understanding we touch is how to be grounded, open and connected and to share that with everyone we contact.

The ultimate reason for developing the skill of interpreting energy goes far beyond the ability to knock someone over. Instead it gives us the ability to help people discover their balance. As you perceive an imbalance with your PH partner it will appear as an excess or a deficiency. Your choice in that moment is to demonstrate this imbalance with your awake presence.

The biggest pitfall we encounter is to either give away our space or to over-defend it. A dichotomous over-reaction. Finding the middle ground and our body’s natural ’roundness’ grows from an internal awareness of root and a free mobility of our body as a whole, moving from its center. To establish that quality, in my experience, requires an easy-going attitude and an unapologetic ownership of our space and our connection to our partner. To find this we get to reclaim our space. It is ok for us to be. Here. Now. To be in control of the space around us. This happens in the spirit of helpfulness. Teaching.

Understanding that we are developing the push-hands skill set in order to be helpful is key. Armed with this sense of purpose we set a clear context for accepting ourselves and being in service to others as we go.

The mechanics of establishing a mobile root are the steps we go through to train our bodies and instincts to be in a state of readiness for connection.

The first key principle is to develop an internal awareness of our body’s physical/energetic center, the dantian.
- What starts as a concept becomes a feeling.
- We learn to allow our awareness to radiate from the center and encompass our entire body.
Then we learn to move from that center, letting our torso and limbs remain in a state of relaxation.
- We rest in a state of lively emptiness.
- We allow free movement in our hips and work with an alignment of the body which minimizes the distractions of gravity.
- We feel our connection with the Earth.
We then learn to let our limbs respond to the direction of the center rather than to forcefully coordinate their actions with the whole.
- This goes with a clear intention in our movements (potential application) and a continuous awareness of the state of our body (dantian awareness).
Once this becomes established in our solo practice we share this study with a partner, learning from each other across an open bond of physical connection.
- We open our hearts across a sense of caring for each other with love.
- We are grounded and then free to make light contact without imposing our imbalance on each other.
- We learn to follow each other without losing contact.
- We allow any pressure to pass through us into our root without collapse, while being free moving enough to roll and deflect or return any force directed at us.
Resting in that awake conscious state, being responsible for our own balance, we are free from competition and able to serve with Love.
- We are free of the sadness of judgement.
- Free of the anger of disconnection.
- Free of the fear of loss.
We respond and move in complete harmony with our partner.
Our balanced awake presence provides feedback on our partner’s forcefulness or lack of balance without us needing to impose our own.
- We don’t push with force. We move with our whole selves while in contact. This becomes gentle feedback, demonstrating where balance is missing. Our presence of contact does the job.
- There is no striking, because we are already in contact.
- We are not fighting each other. We work together to grow.
- Without competition and animosity we discover balance and harmony.

This is why our school has always tied our advanced push hands study with the process of teaching. To establish within ourselves the clear intention of sharing this knowledge for the benefit of all, free of the dialectic of competition. This is the meaning of ‘investment in loss’. We don’t lose when we all learn. Grounding ourselves in our essential unity is the key to success and clears the way to full embodiment of the teaching of Tai Chi, the Supreme Ultimate, inside this art. The chuan is the vehicle for understanding the possibilities of harmony. The true function of the Tai Chi Warrior is to bring peace.

Greg Woodson

September 2014

June 2015 Interview on Push Hands

The following text is an interview with Greg Woodson with questions from Kate Mansfield, also a T’ai Chi Foundation teacher.

Kate: The way you’re teaching Push Hands (PH) lately seems to be very different to what we’ve had in the school in the past. Where has this come from and why do you feel this shift is important in the progression of our school?

Greg: The simple answer is that we know more now. Having a deeper embodiment of the principles involved inspires a change in presentation. The teachings have been consistent, but our (my) understanding of them has shifted to a state where I can demonstrate them instead of just talk about them. Importantly, this also includes when I stumble or revert to fearful or forceful reactions, because those moments become a part of my demonstration that others can relate to as well. Accepting myself as a teacher allows me to feel comfortable showing what I know rather than just delivering a curriculum. I want this for all of us!

Kate: The significant theme seems to be dantien awareness. I love the article by Margaret Olmsted on the T’ai Chi Foundation Teaching Forum where she asked senior teachers about their experience of being in the dantien. If I’m honest, I’m most in my dantien when I’m teaching. In my practice I dip in and out of being there and being in my head. But lately I’ve come to realize that everything must be ‘felt’ from the tan tien. Not just allowing the movement to come from there but allowing the awareness of everything from my feet to my fingertips to be felt from my centre. Can you say a bit about this in the context of PH?

Greg: Interestingly, I have experienced that my embodiment is enhanced by being in the function of teaching. It is giving. I’ve come to realize lately that I can also give that to myself in my practice and daily life. This is huge! For a more “technical” answer: when my dantian awareness incorporates where I am in space relative to my root, then every point of contact with my partners has a direct relationship to that root. The awareness is key. Then the root comes from letting my weight pour through me to the ground. My response then depends upon my ability to remain in a state of ease, allowing free movement in my hips.

Kate: Do you have any tips for practicing dantien awareness (in form practice, everyday life, etc.)?

Greg: Just do it. Or better said, let it happen.

Kate: It seems to me that when I truly practice my form with dantien awareness it has a much more dynamic quality to it, I become one. Before that I was disconnected, therefore in PH I was disconnected. This came from striving to get the postures ‘right’ even if there was a little twisting, reaching, straining. With relaxation and openness (particularly in the hips) I achieve more with less. How can we teach this to our students whilst maintaining the ‘clarity’ of the form postures?

Greg: Our ability to demonstrate that dynamic quality is what delivers the message – that it is possible for anyone. The state of being is the essential component. The directions within the form often serve to remind us of how open we can become. It serves our teaching better to demonstrate a quality of oneness, openness that we manifest in that moment while pointing out the possibilities for growth. Contorting ourselves to demonstrate the “correct” position delivers a very different message. We all are challenged to avoid the pitfall of promoting the dialectic of right v. wrong.

Kate: Listening to and moving with my PH partner requires a quality of contact which often eludes me. I’m either too hard (allowing tension to build up whilst I’m ‘working out what to do’) or too soft (collapsing and not ‘owning my space’). What is needed for good listening contact?

Greg: Listening contact in this context is a function of open hearted compassion. That is constantly challenged by our ego reactions. Establishing awareness, root and easy mobility sets up the security many of us need to open our hearts. The example in your question clearly points to two of the big three types of ego responses we all experience in our PH practice and life.

Kate: How can I overcome barriers such as ‘I’m not doing it right’, ‘I can’t do it’, ‘he’s pushing me’ and other ego stuff that comes up?

Greg: Remembering that you have an alternative to (over)reaction is key. Returning to the state of dantian awareness is the practice. We can allow our thinking mind to remind us of our non-thinking mind. This is a positive use for thought, rather than self-judgement.

Kate: Sometimes I find that I just want to ‘give up’ and be pushed or revert to the security of the ‘routine’. I’m also conscious that despite not wanting to push, the trying to make something happen manifests as force. Help?

Greg: It is essential to remember that as human beings we have all that is needed to embody Tai Chi (the universal principle). Being present allows us to physically respond to our partner’s action without making something happen ourselves. You’ve captured it when you notice that “trying to make something happen manifests as force.” An almost identical motion, even if ‘successful’, has a different effect. An ego action/reaction feels different than a response from principle. Beware of falling into routine in PH as it often becomes sleep. The sequence of moves in the ZMQ PH we practice is there to practice possibilities, not take the place of an actual alive response in the moment to what is actually happening. Dancing is fun. Do it elsewhere.

Kate: How can I shift my approach to PH so its not about winning and losing?

Greg: The real win is when both partners deepen their appreciation of their ability to work in principle by helping each other. When practicing with this spirit, the result is clear feedback based in shared intention to relax.

Kate: I recognize that my issues with PH reflect back at me my ‘tendencies’ in life. How can I use PH to work through these issues and how can other work on these areas help my PH?

Greg: You’ve nailed it here. When you become aware of your reactionary tendencies in PH you start to see the same mechanisms operate in other types of interactions in daily life. Your ability to relax and respond is your guide. Meditative work brings perspective on the relative (un)importance of our ego reactions. This is a hugely useful quality to invite into our lives. In depth meditative-based work on recognizing ego mechanisms as offered by the Arica School® has been a key part of my growth in this.

Kate: In our school we learn ‘techniques’ at different stages of the PH curriculum. How important are these?

Greg: All of the ‘techniques’ that we use are meant as demonstrations of how principle works. They point to something deeper, without having great importance themselves.

Kate: Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers? Perhaps to those who feel ‘uncomfortable’ with PH or feel stuck?

Greg: Be good to yourself. Find where you can relax and work from there. Ego reduction is the grand challenge of life. Embracing PH practice in this light transforms the angst of ego reaction into an enlightening shared process that brings happiness. When we listen to the little negative voices it sucks all the fun right out of it. We get to choose.

My understanding of tai chi comes from the shining example of Zheng Manqing via the transmission of his students with whom I’ve worked. The deeper sense of understanding tai chi’s usefulness as a tool for ego reduction and transmission of Love I attribute to my studies with the Arica School®, founded by Oscar Ichazo.

Top Ten Reasons to Practice Tai Chi

This article was originally written for Ideal Magazine. The link to their posting is: http://www.idealmagazine.co.uk/top-ten-reasons-to-practice-tai-chi/ The formatting here looks a bit different.

Do something nice for yourself
– Practicing Tai Chi makes you feel better

Although Tai Chi is a subtle and lifelong practice, the benefits and pleasure of it begin to accrue immediately. You will discover that you can allow your thinking mind to drop into the background as you explore your inner body awareness.
Over time you will naturally establish a more positive sense of self.

Discover mindfulness
– Get to know the here and now

Gradually learn to establish single-pointed focus through your practice.
Tai Chi is moving meditation, which helps you feel calmer and more centred in everyday life.

Improve your posture
– Reduce strain on supporting muscles and ligaments

Relaxation of the legs allows the pelvis to hang more freely and for the spine to elongate as if the body were suspended from above.
Cultivating this awareness allows for opening in the joints with a more relaxed easy upright posture.

Release stress
– Learn how to stay relaxed and conserve energy

We often hold tension in our bodies unnecessarily, particularly when we are under stress.
Most of us are unaware that we are using far more energy than is needed, which can leave us feeling exhausted. Tai Chi principles help us to relax the body and use less muscular effort.

Strengthen your balance
– Inside & out!

Relax your legs and discover a rooted strength from feeling your feet relax in contact with the earth. This leads to a sense of balance and security.
Physical balance inevitably finds its way into your emotional and intellectual life.

Be the calm at the centre of the storm
– Discover how to move smoothly through life even when under pressure

Tai Chi Chuan is a martial art that recognizes the benefit of presence of mind, timing, balance and Wu Wei (the action of non-action) over conflict, force and aggression. Learn to get out of the way without giving up your balance during interaction.
Recognise that you can avoid conflict without fear, anger or judgement.

Feel better about yourself
– On your own and in a group

Find a positive self-image and the confidence of balance.
Experience the pleasure and satisfaction of participating in such a smooth and flowing group practice.

Tai Chi principles improve relationships
– Develop better rapport based on understanding and respect

Discover how you can apply the wisdom of tai chi, yin/yang, giving & receiving to improve your relationships.
Tai Chi is about sensing, listening and responding to your partner.

Enhance your sensual perception
– Awaken your entire body

Tai Chi Chuan is a martial art that highlights connection, smoothness and harmony of movement.
It can have a very positive effect on your love life, heightening your sensitivity and improving your stamina.

Best of all, discover your inner energy
– Qi (pronounced chee) is your life energy

Qigong, translated loosely as ‘energy work’, is a great part of practicing Tai Chi. It brings the biggest health benefits: longevity, increased strength and improved vitality.
Tai Chi movements gently massage the internal organs while circulating vital qi energy throughout the body, helping us to stay healthy and free from illness.

By Greg Woodson & Kate Mansfield, July 2013.