Please reach us at info@taichiforhealthmarana.com if you cannot find an answer to your question.
No special equipment is needed to practice tai chi.
We recommend: that participants:
Our 1 hour Tai Chi classes begin with a series of Qigong warm-up exercises (Qigong is the mother of Tai Chi) that have been carefully selected to help loosen up the major joints in our bodies.
From there, we will generally review the tai chi form(s) we have previously been working on. Depending upon the participant needs, we might decide to work more on the forms we have already been learning, or if all is progressing well, move on to a new form.
Our progress will be steady and deliberate,, and we will almost never introduce more than one form during a single class. We will typically spend several weeks learning and refining each form - our goal is not to speed through the forms, but to explore each in turn to a depth that is appropriate to the level of participant knowledge.
Our classes conclude with a set of cool down exercises.
Our classes are designed to be very interactive, consistent with participant needs and desires. Questions are encouraged, and even in our beginner classes we start to explore some of the underlying tai chi principles that give such depth to the tai chi forms.
Solo tai chi practice is an important part of anyone's tai chi journey, and affords many advantages. You control the agenda - when, where and what to work on. You can change course on a whim, or repeatedly drill something you want to get right.
There are two categories of group tai chi play. In an instructor-led class, in addition to your own knowledge you can take advantage of another's experience and feedback. In a gathering of tai chi players - maybe you meet up in a park to start the day - there is a special kind of energy that is generated and exchanged between the players. And when you move together in synch a special kind of community exists.
So if you know enough to practice productively on your own by all means do so. But also consider joining in a community of players to exchange Qi.
Tai Chi enjoys worldwide popularity in large part because it offers a wide spectrum of benefits that are available and accessible to many different people.
Some of the physical benefits that come from practicing tai chi regularly include improved cardiovascular function, muscluar, especial core, strength enhancements, improved flexibility and immune system boosts and possible lower body fat levels.
Mental benefits include, among others, stress reduction, decreased anxiety levels, enhanced cognitive functions, improved sleep.
Tai chi has also been shown to improve the mind-body connection, , which in turn can enhance mental clarity, promote emotional stability and focus.
This is just a partial list, and does not touch on many aspects of the healing and meditative benefits, as well as the social and community aspects of practicing tai chi.
Let's leave aside the many YouTube videos that purport to be about tai chi but are perhaps not really - fancy costumes and elaborate settings do not mean you are seeing 'real' tai chi.
YouTube, is however, a wonderful resource for accessing the many legitimate tai chi players making useful tai chi content. Many of the visible differences you will notice are because tai chi has evolved into different styles, such as Chen (the oldest), Yang (the most widely practiced), Wu and Sun style (the upright form that we teach in our Tai Chi for Health classes.
Excellent question.
A trick question, as tai chi is a special kind of Qigong.
Our learning process is very iterative, and we always repeat what we have been working on multiple times to facilitate learning. We follow Dr. Lam's Stepwise Progressive Teaching Method (SPTM), which breaks down each tai chi form into a simple series of movements. We address each movement in turn and gradually knit them together until we are performing an entire form, which we then link to the forms we have already been working on.
This evidenced based tai chi program has been the subject of numerous peer reviewed studies. It has been approved for use by the Centers for Disease Control , the National Arthritis Foundation, Harvard Medical School and many other organizations across the world.
Dr. Lam's TCA/FP program and the SPTM have been used during the past 30 years to train hundreds of thousands of participants in more than 20 countries around the world,
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