A blog about the intersection of Tai Chi, Zen and Dao. I hope that you find something of value for your own practice.

Thanks for stopping by,

Rich

Tuesday 12 June 2012

Why Study T'ai Chi?

There are as many reasons to learn and study T'ai Chi as there are people who do it!  Some of the more popular ones that I have heard people express are "Doing T'ai Chi helps to relieve the stress of my high pressure life";T'ai Chi helped improve my mobility and balance"; "I feel more alive after doing T'ai Chi"; "T'ai Chi has really helped me to become a healthier person"; "T'ai Chi helped me to recover more fully and faster from my injuries"; and the list goes on. So there are many reasons to do T'ai Chi.

I started my own T'ai Chi practice to help aid in my recovery from a serious chronic lower back condition that was severely restricting the types and amount of activity that I was able to do and occasionally would keep me bedridden for days at a time. Those days are long gone and T'ai Chi definitely played a major role in my recovery.  I now regularly go on multi-day hiking trips, extended bike rides and run several half marathons a year.  In May of 2012 I completed my first marathon!!

T'ai Chi is a wonderful meditative practice and is an excellent complement to spiritual  practices.  It can help you better integrate sitting meditation into your daily life because during T'ai Chi practice, you need to maintain a similar state of awareness while actually moving your body through a series of complex postures.

T'ai Chi is also quite beautiful to watch.  The movements of the forms are very carefully arranged to move you from posture to posture while at the same time, gently stretching and reforming your tendons and ligaments to increase your mobility and energy. The quality of flow that results often looks like a graceful dance.

T'ai Chi is different for every person because every person's body is different. I am very sensitive to this and work with my students to do the best T'ai Chi they can with their unique physique and physical challenges.  Because my own practice began as a means to help relieve a chronic back condition, I  especially enjoy working with people who have physical limitations that they would like to improve or overcome.

Keep playing.

Rich