the balance of tai chi
This is a six-week course of incorporating greater balance into learning a short form of tai chi.
We include a warm up which includes working on spiralling our energy, we include a number of different qigong exercises which improve our breathing regulation and they include animal qigong and an internal organ massage qigoing called the Ba Duan Jin.
The main focus of each class is working on an exercise called ‘4 walls’. This challenging exercise asks us to listen to our body rather than our minds and what starts as seemingly counterintuitive peels away layer upon layer of nuance and builds the paradox of softening while strengthening. It instils in each person a greater balance and meditative quality.
We always spend time reading a chapter from the Tao te Ching, (the book of the way) by the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu.
We finish the class with a standing meditation acknowledging the three parts of our body called the ‘tan tiens’, (fields of medicine), the upper, middle and lower tan tien. These three parts are the mind, heart and lungs and the digestive system, which are all part of the autonomic nervous system.
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