Archives for 2009

Tai Chi Lollies

When I started Tai Chi 22 years ago I was like a little kid in a lolly (candy) store.

I wanted all the lollies, every colour except the black ones and I wanted them now.

In my first year I watched various students practice weapons, do some boxing drills, push hands and I wanted to do all of that straight away.

Well, all I did was learn the Tai Chi form and basics and it took a while before I was slowly introduced to push hands, weapons forms and self defence.

I realised that Tai Chi was not something you can knockover in a few months. If it was I’d be bored and leave.

So 22 years on I feel I’ve hardly scratched the surface. In the early years it worried me because I didn’t feel I was making much progress.

As the years crept by I stopped worrying about comparing myself to others who were more experienced and talented.

I just kept plugging away, practicing and now realise there is no end to the journey.

Just as soon as you feel you have climbed a mountain top, you look up and there are higher mountain tops.

I can now understand it is the journey that is important not the destination.

I haven’t trained at a club or with a partner for some time now because running our business has taken up most of my time.

However I will get back into training with a partner in the near future and until I do I will keep practicing on my own.

So I suppose I’ve come a long way from that little kid in the lolly store who wanted everything now.

I’m more patient now.

Push Hands Relationships

By Chris 3 Comments

Sue and I ran our AQ/KQ of Change workshop the other day and used Push Hands to demonstrate the nature of healthy work relationships.

The two themes we concentrated on were ‘adherence’ and ‘listening energy.’

It certainly made our audience focus on these themes in a physical way and it was something very different with regard to their experiences in understanding relationships.

The group consisted of leaders and managers who were there to learn about change.

Adherence was used to demonstrate that you need to stay in contact if you are to develop and maintain good relationships at work.

When you let go and there is no adherence, gaps exist and that’s where problems can creep in and affect the quality of a relationship.

Listening energy was also emphasised.

From a Tai Chi point of view, listening energy makes you aware of your opponents’ moves at all times.You can sense their energy through your arms.

From a relationship viewpoint, listening energy is the ability to focus and really hear what the other person is saying.

There were other aspects of Push Hands we went into regarding relationships – but that’s another post for later.

It was a great fun introducing the group to Tai Chi exercises and concepts in a practical way.

And we had a very good response from the group.

Tai Chi Tip #39

By Chris Leave a Comment

When parrying with your arm, turn your waist

6,000 Reasons

By Chris Leave a Comment

I’ve been doing some number crunching lately.

In particular, on how many primary school children have attended my Pozitive Kidz are happy kidz program since it started three years ago.

6000 kids!

That’s alot.

My program teaches 5-12 year olds how to build their self esteem from a Tai Chi perspective.

And it’s a humbling and satisfying feeling.

To know that I’ve been able to introduce the profound art of Tai Chi to young children and maybe have had some effect in helping them to feel better about themselves.

It’s certainly given me the opportunity to be creative with Tai Chi and it challenges me to adjust my presentation style according to the age group in front of me.

For example if they are very young I’m more animated, use simple language, keep them constantly occupied using different exercises. If they’re older I’m a bit more cool and mature.

If I taught Tai Chi the traditional wayI know the kids would be bored very quickly. [Read more…]

The Tai Chi Form

By Chris Leave a Comment

I was asked recently what is the ‘form’ in Tai Chi so I thought now would be a good time to do a post on it.

The word ‘form’ in Tai Chi can have different meanings so let’s clarify that now.

There’s the Tai Chi form and there are weapons forms such as sabre form, sword form, spear form and staff form.

I’ll focus on the generally accepted view of the ‘form’ as in the Tai Chi form.

The Tai Chi form is a series of mostly slow movements that are performed in sequence. See the clip below.

There are different syles or forms – the major ones are:

Wu
Yang
Chen
Sun
Wu/Hao

There are two categories of forms:

1. The traditional form (long form)

has 37 original postures ( e.g. Grasping the Bird’s Tail, Clouded Hands etc.)
usually have 108 postures (movements) which include repeats of the 37 original postures
about 15-20 minutes to perform, some are longer in duration
6-12 months to learn

2. Short Forms

made up of postures from the traditional forms – could be any postures in any sequence
4 minutes or more in duration
6 or more weeks to learn

[Read more…]