Anybody practice tai chi or qigong?

[Insider]

thinking about starting soon. read some web stuff, but sure would appreciate any firsthand input.

[oregonjen]

1. My husband does his own version of Tai Chi

He's Japanese and enjoys doing Tai Chi in the morning. It relaxes him, centers his thoughts and gets him ready for the day.

[Insider]

6. thanks

was wondering if japanese practiced tai chi. looking forward to getting started soon.

[BeatleBoot]

2. No, but if you hum a few bars...

Sorry, just couldn't resist...

;)

[Insider]

3. :chortle:

haven't used that word in way too long. thx :D

[m-jean03]

4. I practice some qigong...

I think it's a great exercise - really very centering, calming, and excellent for the digestion in the morning. I don't know a lot about it... I just practice a couple of sets that my mom taught me a while back. But it's been really helpful in healing from chronic fatigue.

There's a good quarterly magazine about these martial arts called Qi Journal. Here's the website: http://qi-journal.com/

Good luck, and have fun! :)

[Insider]

5. thanks much

that sounds like just the ticket for me

[no_hypocrisy]

7. T'ai Chi Chih (version by Justin Stone). Highly recommended.

I first learned it when I was fired last year and I gained peace and balance literally and figuratively. I returned to call months later when I was recovering from a totally torn knee ligament as a form of physical therapy. I gradually gained muscle strength and lost my limp, and healing from the inside.

I wish everyone could have the advantage of taking a class and adopting it into their lives. It's easy and it doesn't take much time out of your day. Not to mention the benefits.

[Unperson 309]

8. Never Tried Tai Chi, but I LOVE Chai Tea! eom

[tigereye]

9. we have been doing Yang short form for many years

and some gigong and sword form. Tai chi is wonderful and very relaxing. Just find a good teacher who has good form and is supportive.

[ForrestGump]

10. Have done some tai chi and chi kung,

as part of my broader training in Chinese martial arts.

Tai chi is excellent -- you can't lose, if you're trained by a good teacher, because even if the whole idea of chi and Chinese medicine seems bogus to you you're still going to get an excellent workout...one of the best, and very low impact (but not without exertion...the Chinese have historically done paradoxes like nobody else :-) ).

Much depends on the style that you train in. Yang is the most widespread...actually, the newer Officially Sanctioned By The PRC standardized version is probably #1 by virtue of the PRC's sheer numbers, but I think it's basically a distillation of Yang. Sun and Wu are two of the lesser-practiced stytles that are a little more complex and less simplified than Yang. Chen style is pretty cool in that it incorporates some very powerful faster moves. There're a few other smnaller styles out there. It's imnportant to, especially if you're going into the martial or healing aspect of it, to check the teacher's lineage.

Of course, all tai chi (all Chinese martial arts) can ultimately be done fast or slow, and if you find a teacher who's legitimately able to teach the martial aspect of tai chi (it's not necessary if you really just want to train for general health, stretching, etc) you've hit the jackpot...if there's one ultimate martial art, it's probably (believe it or not) tai chi. The first time I 'crossed hands' with a tai chi teacher was after I'd been doing kung fu training, heavily, for 11 years -- the little dude literally threw me across the room, airborne. I just couldn't get a grip on him, hit him, or much of anything else. I'm bigger than average, too, and he was a wiry Chinese man shorter and lighter than me. Pretty amazing, and I honeslty did not beleive that tai chi could really be that powerful -- if you'd seen us, you'd have probably thought that I was faking it or making it easy for him, but I wasn't. Takes a long time to get the martial aspect working, though. A LONG time. But it's some testament that most complete Chinese 'kung fu' styles, and some of the big Okinawan/Japanese karate styles, eventually end up very much looking and feeling like tai chi, at their highest levels.

Anyway, it's great stuff. I'm still fixated primarily on the 'external' Chinese styles, the hard/soft fast stuff you see in the Hong Kong movies (but, whoa, talk about too much hard work!), but I do look forward to the day when I am truly ready to really give tai chi years of practice. What I've done so far has been great, and it's helped my kung fu as it'll help every aspect of your life.

Go for it!


P.S.: ditto most of this with chi kung...chi kung, martial arts, and traditional Chinese medicine are basically inextricably linked. Most kung fu systems include sets that are explicitly chi kung and the very essense of kung fu is basically chi kung. And tai chi really is chi kung. Stand-alone (as if!) chi kung can take many forms: solo, with one or more partners, moving, stationary, etc.

Again, it can work wonders and, like broader Chinese medicine, the fact that it might not always effect a cure within a particular person certainly makes it no less effective than Western medicine (given that we don't even know how a great many drugs actually work, often take drugs that don't work, and too often poison ourselves with said drugs that doctors are all too ready to prescribe). Besides, chi kung -- like tai chi and other Chinese martial arts -- is first and foremost about prevention...totally different paradigm than the allopathic tendency to generally favor addressing individual symptoms (even when its apparent that they're linked, especially through the immune system) rather than actually preventing illness in the first place or slowly addressing its root causes.

The Chinese have let their country and their society go -- Mao's Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were tremendously destructive -- but, traditionally, they had it going on in terms of health, environmental ethic and relationships, and personal optimization. The good news is that fleeing citizens exported some of that knowledge to the US and elsewhere, so go find it.

[Eye and Monkey]

11. I think it's very helpful to find a master.

I read quite a number of books on my own, and tried. Eventually, I found a tai chi master in town - one that I felt was right for me. The difference was remarkable. Later, I had the opportunity to study qigong in China.