5 Ideas to re-awaken your Tai Chi practice
Started learning Tai Chi, but your practice is beginning to flag? It happens. You bought the book, enrolled in a course or started a local class only to wonder where your energy has gone?
Fear not! The teapotmonk is here to deliver this handy list of 5 Tips to Reinvigorate your Flagging TAI CHI FORM: Five juicy morsels of advice from five leaders in their specific fields. Record down the 5 tips (advice in yellow, tips in green) for future use. Study the photos/videos for inspiration, then, go forth and practice with renewed vigour.
Want practical ideas and short 10 minute training sessions? Check out the Workouts Course for the most diverse offering on Tai Chi, qigong and toast related practices ever bundled in a single package.
1: “I shut my eyes in order to see”
SOURCE: Artist Paul Gauguin, demonstrating below Golden Rooster as part of his unique seated Tai Chi style Form.
Closing your eyes is like hitting the mute button on a noisy world, giving your other senses a chance to show off. Suddenly, you notice the soft rustling of leaves outside the window, the scent of fresh coffee, or even the tickle of a cool breeze on your skin.
One of the most beautiful and practical exercises you can do to awaken your senses is with a partner in this routine in which one person adheres to another, follows or sticks to another persons energy and flow.
The Aim: Not to hold on but instead to “feel” the direction, tension, breath, angle of movement and pace through softness and yielding.
The Rules: Minimal finger-tip contact and keep your eyes closed in order to see.
Extra Training: Check out the 6 Audio-only sessions in the Workouts Course for reducing your senses to discover more.
2: “Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens”
SOURCE: Jimi Hendrix whilst pondering over the difference between knowledge and wisdom and which strings not to bite.
By emphasising listening, Hendrix suggests that wisdom comes from being open to others' perspectives, learning from experiences, and being thoughtful in response. It's a reminder that sometimes the most profound understanding comes not from speaking, but from truly hearing and considering what others have to say.
We talk a lot about listening energy in Tai Chi, how to practice it and how to use it. But, and therein lies the problem.
We are too often talking rather than listening.
Browse any Facebook group, internet Forum, social media page and you'll find far too many cooks in the kitchen. Each insisting on a specific path, each explaining the minutiae of every move until every molecular change has been annotated. Explanations expand to fill all the spaces between all the words so as to leave no room to draw a breath, to ponder and muse, to pause and wonder why.
AIM: leave room to grab a coffee and a Portuguese custard tart. This will help stop that flagging feeling. Less agendas, more blank slates.
EXTRA TRAINING: Check out the 9 Meditative Walks for developing your listening skills in the Workouts Course
3: “If you hold on tight you will lose your grip.”
SOURCE: Lao Tzu on taking the road less heavy.
You can’t keep a fist clenched for long before it returns to an open, soft hand.
A frown will eventually dissolve, a shoulder must finally drop after being hunched all day.
Clouds gather, rain falls and then the sun returns.
One day you have good wifi cover, then the next you can’t pick up a signal.
The wise one works alongside the direction of nature and not against it.
TIP: It’s like trying to hold water in your hands; the tighter you squeeze, the more it slips away. Let go, and trust that some things are better when you can’t control every detail (and less tiring!
EXTRA TRAINING: Follow Lao Tz's Time travelling interview in One Last thing
4: “It is not our abilities that show us who we really are, but our choices.”
SOURCE: Professor Albus Dumbledore (before issuing wands).
FOR STUDENTS: While natural talents and abilities are important, it is ultimately the decisions we make that define our true character. Being a good person is more about the actions we choose to take than the innate skills we possess
FOR TEACHERS (SIFUS) Demonstrating a complex or advanced technique isn’t always the right thing. Step off the stage. If you want to help someone understand, then learn to step back, forget the theatricals.
Demonstrating Snake Creeps Down? Show the move as a beginner will do it, not as your Grandmaster did it when posing for that photo in his 20s.
EXTRA BONUS TRAINING: Explore the sample sessions and tai chi approaches when you become a free member of the 21st century training program
5: “It’s not where we get it from, it’s who we give it to that matters”.
SOURCE: Jean Luc Godard upon being told the idea wasn’t his (Whilst eating a Portuguese custard tart)
I wanted to learn Logic at university. After 2 classes I went to see the head of the Department and said I couldn't carry on. "Why?" he asked? "Because the teacher sends me to sleep" I said in the inflated confidence and self-righoutesness of youth.
But I did learn a lesson. What was the point in teaching something if the way in which you taught it, put everyone off?
Who judges a book on the cover alone? Look inside. Is it factually correct but uses a really bad font, single spacing, and is devoid of even a single picture? Does it send you to sleep, does it come with crayons? Do you have to colour it in? Will it tempt you to underline a phrase or scratch it out? Will it make you laugh or cry? Choose your method of learning accordingly.
The solution lies not only in what is conveyed, but how.
TIP: The value in what we possess lies in how we share it with others.
EXTRA BONUS TRAINING: Sharing and exploring the rich diversity of approaches in Tai Chi in the classic teapot podcast - on Spotify, Apple and all good podcast apps.
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