Many beginners think that they do not need to warm-up. Skipping a warm-up will automatically result in pain later on, and that will restrict your fighting abilities. A good pre-workout warm-up protects against future aches and pains. Furthermore, it is also an immediate factor in improving performance.
(Frederic Delavier)
Your mind perceives reality and then determines how, when or if to act. The clearer your perception, the more appropriate the course of action you take.
Clarity does not emerge spontaneously.
Few people think clearly. Cultivating clarity takes time, contemplation, study, meditation and patience.
When luxury and excess begin in high places,
the effects spread everywhere.
When leaders have more wealth than wisdom,
they prefer fancy clothes and exotic foods,
foolish amusements and self-indulgence.
When they place their own wellbeing
above the care of others,
They are worse than common thieves.
(Lao Tzu)
There is a danger in seeking to be gratified or entertained. Comfort is a sword that cuts both ways. A modicum of hardship keeps us alive and alert.
Rather than indulge in that trip to Cambodia, go and work at the soup kitchen.The unfamiliar may cause apprehension and uncertainty but that is the entire point. Undertaking new pursuits and interests breaks you from lifelong bad habits and the risk of indolence.
You will also meet new and unexpected people.You are what you eat. No matter what you do with your body or your mind, nutrition remains paramount. Take the time to find out what qualifies as high quality nutrition and eat to stay alive.
Most studies agree that there are a number of key personality characteristics that are important for healthy aging: easygoing, cheerful, self-confident, adaptable, active, independent, creative, happy, relaxed, satisfied, calm, open, agreeable, conscientious, sociable and having a high tolerance for frustration being mentioned most often.
The traits that lead to an unhealthy, shorter life? Being repressed, dogmatic, stubborn, hostile, neurotic, angry, guilty, sad, fearful, anxious, depressed and aggressive.
(Dr Bradley Wilcox, Dr Craig Wilcox and Dr Makoto Suzuki)
Most people exercise with extremely bad posture and poor habits of body use. Qigong and tai chi are trying to remedy these.
If you train another system frequently enough, the benefits of tai chi are nullified. It is OK to train a wide range of exercise methods without ruining your tai chi. The key concern is moderation.
Avoid over-doing it: over-stretching, straining or exerting. Be mindful of posture, poise and tension.
Students often want to do other forms of exercise in addition to their tai chi. This is fine. The question is: does the other method conflict with the goals of tai chi? Balance? Relaxed muscles? Coordination?
If it does, the tai chi will not work and you will not get the desired fitness benefits or any martial skill.
Tai chi is not aiming to produce a 'tai chi body'. Rather, it seeks to restore the body to a unified condition of wholeness. Balanced. Mobile. Coordinated. Agile. Supple. Youthful.
Balance is a good thing to think about, but can lead to a false idea of fixity. Our aim is not to be rigid and stable like a wardrobe or a house.
We want to be balancing... 'Balancing' is a process of adjustment; altering what we do in response to what is taking place. Now, that is healthy. Mentally and physically.
Our information-saturated culture has produced a distracted, lazy, bored, restless, stressed, unhealthy population. People expect instant gratification. They want to show off.
They want results without putting in any work. They want to share their opinions. Speculate. Talk politics.
Not a great starting place for a new starter? However, the very fact that the person wants to try something new is a good start. It offers hope. The possibility of change.
At some level the individual wants to change. This is good. However, to make any real progress in tai chi they have shed these modern, unproductive attitudes...
The thinking patterns and habits of new students are often far worse than their bodies. Most people have never stuck any new endeavour long enough to understand what learning entails.
They tend to be impatient, overconfident and naive concerning their own abilities. e.g. we once had a man with an artificial hip who neglected to mention it on his 'medical liability disclaimer' because he personally didn't consider it to be a medical matter...
If you want to reconsider 'thinking', why not read Grit, Smarter Faster Better, 5 Elements of Effective Thinking and Peak...? Then put the suggested thinking skills into actual practice.
New starters tend to have appalling body habits. These have been accumulated across a lifetime; producing a random, haphazard mess. Sometimes, the habits are the outcome of yoga, the gym or a sport.
The tai chi teacher usually wishes they could dismantle the student's body and start again, but it doesn't work like that because bodies are organic. The body needs to loosen up, relax and then re-grow.
This requires patience, focus and perseverance... like a gardener. Results won't come overnight.
If your muscles are working optimally, they should move your body around without there being any sense of work taking place. Everything will feel comfortable, easy and smooth.
When you are chronically over-working your muscles, this is not the case at all. You exert constantly. You apply vast amounts of energy to the performance of simplistic tasks that require almost no energy to accomplish.The largest impediment faced by a student of tai chi is their own perception of strength. Invariably, the student is convinced that their physical experience of strength is strength.
Quite often they are wrong. What they are feeling is not strength at all. It is tension.Looking is focussed and narrow. Seeing is expansive and open. Meditation is the condition of being present, of seeing without impediment.
You are very much in the immediate moment: feeling, seeing, experiencing. There are no thoughts and no worries.Modern people are seldom fully present. They try to 'multi-task'. Even when there are no obvious, visible distractions, they somehow manage to be elsewhere.
These same people worry about Alzheimer's disease...
