Existing habits

When joining an external martial arts class, a student has familiar habits of body use.
The person may be tense, aggressive, macho.
They may be pumped-up and accustomed to using force.
Ideally, the teacher will find a way to channel these habits into learning the given art.

Tai chi is different to this.
Chinese people have trained the internal arts for centuries without needing to be pumped-up, aggressive or unduly strong.
Usually, a tai chi new starter must lose their existing habits and begin again.
This is a challenging process but very rewarding as it pays long-terms dividends in terms of health, wellbeing and biomechanically efficient body use.

Training internal movement

Qigong exercises train the body to move in a unique, connected, relaxed way.
These exercises are simple and quite easy to learn.

The student focuses upon basic movements without additional concerns intruding.

Why bother?

Imagine that you have a large amount of work to do and you give it to 1 member of staff...
Now, consider sharing that same amount of work amongst 100 members of staff?
Instead of 1 staff member working extra hard to do the job, 100 people are working together.
The job will be done more quickly and each individual has less of the overall responsibility for completing the job.

Conventional muscle use involves a limited number of muscles being assigned to a given task.

Whole-body power entails all of your muscles being used together.
Consequently, the task feels less strenuous and is more easily fulfilled.

Whole-body

Neigong is concerned with whole-body movement.
This is distinct to how most people normally move in that every body part should be involved in every movement.
Accomplishing this is not easy.

As a child you possessed whole-body movement, but as an adult you have lost it from a lifetime of bodily misuse and bad habits.