Chris Chi

Tai Chi for health & wellbeing

 

 

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Understanding Yin Yang

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To understand and appreciate the philosophy of Yin Yang is a never ending journey and takes years of study and practice.

When I deliver a presentation with my colleague Sue James, and need to cover Yin Yang in a very short time I use the ‘Yin Yang arm exercise’.

The ‘Yin Yang arm exercise’ works for adults in our facilitation work – children in our Pozitive Kidz are happy kidz workshops – secondary students Year 7-12 students.

Here’s how the ‘Yin Yang arm exercise’ works.

  1. Hold out your arm in front of you to about shoulder high
  2. Now stretch your arm out further until you feel a slight strain – that is extreme Yang
  3. Drop your arm down to your thigh – that is extreme Yin
  4. Now hold your arm out in front of you again
  5. Bend your are elbow slightly
  6. Now the outstretched arm is relaxed

By bending the elbow slightly you now have Yin in your outstretched arm. There are no longer extremes of Yin and Yang in your arm.

The idea of this exercise is how in Tai Chi you can maintain postures for long periods of time  i.e. there must be Yin and Yang in all postures.

I’ve demonstrated this exercise for children as young as five years old to mature adults in their eighties.

To really understand Yin Yang you need to go beyond theory and practice and feel it in your Tai Chi form and Chi Kung exercises.

 

Footnote: Basic explanation: Yang – active energy. Yin – inactive energy

 

 

 

Weapons Training Without Weapons

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I’ve been practicing my double fan form and the other day I was at a picnic in a park and forgot to bring my fans along.

So I searched around for a couple of sticks about the same size of the fans in length, and practised the form.

I try and practice on a regular basis and if do not have my Tai Chi weapons I improvise and practice a weapon form without the weapon.

It certainly makes you concentrate on other parts of the body when you do this. Sometimes when you practice a weapons’ form you can focus too much on the weapon  itself and not enough on your body balance or movement.

Eventually you just ‘do’ and not focus on your weapon. But every now and then it’s good to focus on other aspects of your weapon form.

So when you ‘do’ it all comes together.

Besides using sticks you can also imagine you are holding a weapon and practice a weapon form either mentally or physically.

So the next time you forget or can’t use a weapon in a particular space –  why not practice your weapons training without weapons.

 

 

 

Tai Chi Kidz Race

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I’ve used the Tai Chi Kidz Race drill to teach children how to slow down and move correctly.

Here’s how it works.

I get the class to line up at one end of the hall. Then I say to them ‘we going to have a race.’ They usually get excited at this.

Then I say, ‘okay, the slowest person wins.’ At first there are confused looks but once they get started their movements slow right down. Some hardly move at all.

It’s a bit of reverse psychology by making it completely different from their expectations of a race.

The benefits?

Kids learn to co-ordinate their bodies and improve their balance. It’s a fun drill. And I can also teach other specific body movement skills, for example tucking in your tailbone as you step.

Why not have a go and teach this to your junior Tai Chi or martial arts class?

If you do, let me know how it goes.

 

Get On With It!!!

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I was cleaning up and discovered my old clip board which had a Tai Chi training plan written in permanent texta.

The training plan was created about twenty years ago when I was training with two friends of mine on a Sunday morning. I decided to write the plan because we were spending too much time on analysis and not enough time on training.

Here’s the plan;

10.00am – Sabre

10.25 – Break

10.30 – Refresher

10.45 – 9 castle, Da Lu

10.55 – break

11.00 – Push Hands

11.25 – Break

11.30 – Application: Drills

12.00 – Optional

12.15 – Push Hands

12.45 – Free

1.00pm – End

And on the bottom of the clipboard are the following words – ‘Get On With It!!!

 

 

Tai Chi Shorts

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It was hot the other day and I was practicising a Tai Chi posture in front of my mirror wearing my shorts.

Through the reflection of the mirror I noticed my knees were out of alignment. Had I been wearing my normal pants I may not have noticed the error.

It was a good lesson – in future I’ll occasionally wear shorts when I practice regardless of the weather – to make sure my knees are in the correct position and to avoid aggravating my minor knee injuries.

Not a difficult task considering I’m training  indoors for a specific session.

It’s these little things of self discovery that can make a big difference to the quality of training.

And also keep my knees happy.