Tai Chi For Beginners - 10 MUST KNOW TIPS for better Tai Chi.

In this video I'm going to be sharing 10 tips that's going to help you go further and faster with your Tai Chi and we're starting right now. Tip number one is learn one form and learn it well. When I started out learning Tai Chi I've went through a few different teachers and every teacher has their own way of teaching. Many teachers will teach you one form and then they'll teach you another form. They might teach you a weapons form and maybe a second weapons form or maybe even three weapon forms. What I recommend is that you use one form and just really work that one form so that you can get depth into that form. When you branch out into multiple different forms you're not able to go deep into any one form but when you work one form and just keep working it and working it and working it what you're going to find is that you're discovering more and more nuances as you go through the form. Every time you do the form you're going to learn something different, you're going to discover something new. That's why it's excellent to work one form and just work it, work it, work it. The second tip we're covering today is to slow down with your Tai Chi. Now I know that might sound unusual considering Tai Chi is very slow anyway but a lot of people try to rush through the form and just get from start to finish without thinking and really slowing down into the movements to feel what's going on inside the body. When you really slow down your form and I mean really slow it down you'll find that you're feeling more sensitivity and more connection to the body with the extremities as you go through the movements. So when we're moving too fast and we're just trying to get through the movements what happens is we'll feel that we're going to feel very disconnected from our center but when you really slow down the movement you can sense and you can feel like does this feel correct, where do I feel any tension or where does the movement feel not correct. So by really really slowing it down you're going to find that you're going to develop more sensitivity to the movement and find the correct alignment in your form. The third tip I want to share with you is to wear flat shoes. In Tai Chi we're trying to develop as much balance as we can and every little millimeter is going to affect how your balance is overall. So if you're wearing shoes that have a thick heel like a running shoe for example then the heel of the foot is going to be up slightly which means that your legs are going to be more forward and different muscle groups are going to be engaged just to keep your body in balance. Whereas if you're wearing shoes that are flat soled then you're going to be more sensitive to the ground, your toes are going to be able to touch down on the ground and the weight distribution is going to be spread more evenly across the surface of the foot. So wear flat shoes and a little add-on to this one is try to practice on a flat surface. So as you'll know with Tai Chi you're going to be moving all over the place, you could be moving around 10 meters in a 10 square meter area. So what you want to ensure is that the area that you're practicing on is as smooth and flat and level as possible. If the ground is all uneven and up and down and hills you know it's going to affect your balance again. It's like wearing shoes without extremely high heel because your body is tilting forward or tilting back or tilting this way or tilting that way. It's going to mess with your alignment and make it more difficult to find that perfect balance which is what you're striving for with your Tai Chi. The fourth tip is to practice the empty step or stepping like a cat. In Tai Chi what we want to try and do is before we step we want to touch down with the heel of the foot and then gently shift the weight forward onto that foot. Then when the weight is forward onto that front foot we're going to gently lift in the back foot and then step forward. We call it empty step. So when you put your foot down you're not putting the weight into your foot. It's like it's cat stepping. You're not putting all the weight down into your foot. You wait until you're sure that your foot is in the correct place then you just slowly shift the weight forward onto that foot. So practicing the empty step is going to really help you accelerate your Tai Chi growth. You'll also find that when you're practicing the empty step your legs are going to be working like five times harder. It's much more of a challenge for the legs to practice that empty step and keep your vertical alignment correct while you're doing the movements. But that's the Tai Chi way. Practicing that empty step is going to get you further and faster in Tai Chi. The fifth tip I'm going to share with you is to get a standing post meditation practice going before you start your Tai Chi. So a standing post meditation is where you're standing with the feet about shoulder width apart. You've got your hands just up in front of the body as if you're holding a ball. In this position you want to maintain your vertical alignment, relaxing the neck, relaxing the back and sinking the weight down into the feet. What we're trying to develop with the standing post meditation is we're trying to develop relaxation right throughout the structure. You want to ensure that your shoulders are sinking down and relaxed and that the weight is primarily going straight down into the feet. You'll know that you're doing standing post meditation correctly because you'll feel your legs engage. You might need to relax the tailbone of the body and that way when you relax the tailbone the upper body can relax down into the legs. You'll feel the legs get heavy and you might feel some pressure underneath the soles of the feet. This is your standing post practice. It's going to help you develop more relaxation. Once you've practiced the standing post meditation, that feeling that you get in your standing post, you want to try and bring that into the form. So that heaviness that you're going to feel in the legs, you want to bring that into the form and try to maintain that heaviness in the legs throughout the form within your practice. Standing post meditation is a great way to develop relaxation and to become more aware of what you're feeling in your body. Where is the tension? Where are the big tensions in your body? It's sometimes difficult to find tension when you're moving around doing the form because you're trying to concentrate on so many other things. But when you do a standing meditation and you've got your eyes closed and you're just relaxing and feeling into the body, that's a great opportunity for you to become aware of where your stiffness is, where your tension is, so that you can release it and then bring that feeling into the form. The sixth tip I want to share with you is, if you're just getting into tai chi and it's new for you, you might find that your body is very stiff and tense. Some people don't even realize how much tension and stiffness they have in their bodies. But I can assure you, if you haven't done any kind of meditation or relaxation practices before, you're going to have a lot of tension in your body, in your shoulders, in your back, all over the place. So one way to get rid of some of that tension before you get into your standing post or before you get into your tai chi is to practice some joint rotation exercises or some body loosening exercises. I'll put a link up in the YouTube card of some of these joint rotation exercises that you can practice so you can develop more relaxation before you get into your form. I've done these exercises for many years and to this day I still practice some of them before I get into my form, just to get loosened up, develop some more relaxation and get more sung into the body. So tip number six is to practice relaxation exercises like joint rotation exercises or body loosening exercises before you start your practice. It's going to help you relax much faster. Tip number seven is training consistently. Tai chi is about developing muscle memory or energetic memory within the body. So what's going to really help you move further and faster is if you can be consistent with your practice. The best way to train is like every day if you can but five days a week or four or five days a week and just doing a consistent practice is going to get you much further along faster with your practice. It's hard enough to remember the form if you're just going from one week to the next week and you're only practicing once a week. It's difficult to develop mastery in anything if you're only practicing it once a week. Now I know if you're just getting into tai chi that might be where you're at. When I started tai chi I was really just doing it once a week and that was when I was with the teacher in the class. I was practicing for one or two hours in that class and then the rest of the week I wouldn't even practice at all. But many years ago I went and did more of intensive training where I was training six seven days a week twice a day and I can tell you it absolutely accelerated the experience of aliveness, the chi in the body, the relaxation and just the flow of energy within the body. Everything was just accelerated a hundred percent from that consistency. It's like anything else. If you want to become good at the guitar you can't practice once a week. You've got to practice every day. It's like playing the piano or anything that you want to get good at. The more you practice it the better you're going to get, the faster you're going to get better. So practicing every day if you can, but if not just getting a consistent practice in is going to accelerate your growth and help you go further and faster. Tip number eight is to check your body for relaxation as often as you can. So you might be doing your movements and in the middle of a form and just as you're doing the movements just ask yourself, are my shoulders relaxed? You might notice that they're not. The thing is with relaxation I can tell you right now that if you were to just sit for a minute and just ask yourself where am I feeling some tension in the body and say okay right can I relax my shoulders a little bit and then relax your shoulders or allow your shoulders to just sink down and relax and then move on to another body part. Let's say your lower back, relaxing the lower back. Then move on to another body part, let's say your legs and just feel that relaxation in the legs. Now I want you to go back to your shoulders and ask yourself are the shoulders still relaxed or could I relax them a little bit more? I think you're going to find that your shoulders as soon as you relax the shoulders they're just going to start tensing up again because of muscle memory. Tension has a memory within the body that's why our shoulders get stiff. The tension is like pulling together so we can consciously relax the body using the mind. The shoulders will relax but as soon as you start doing something else and take your mind and your awareness off your shoulders they're going to start to tense up again slowly. I promise you, you'll find that for sure. So tip number eight is consistently and with being very thorough with going through and double checking for relaxation within the body. Just checking, checking, checking again, being consistent with that and making it a regular practice in your practice. Tip number nine is to, this is more of an advanced tip but when you're doing your practice there's two things I want to say about the hands. First of all is when you're doing your form you want to, with the eyes, you want to follow the hands when they're doing the movement. Following the hands with the eyes. You want to ensure that you keep an eye on your hands. That way it's going to help you to become more aware of where the position is that everything is. It's going to keep you aware of where your hands are in relation to your center and it's advanced tip I want to pass on here about the hands is try to keep your fingers close together. Even your thumb, keep them sort of in closer together, not spread out like this. So if you're doing your Tai Chi and your hands are like this, you know you're going to feel a little bit more disconnected within the hand but try this in your practice. Instead of having your hands open, have your hands closed and you'll feel straight away more power, more Chi flowing to the hand through the wrist. So give that a go in your practice and guarantee you'll see great results from it. The last tip number 10 is be patient with Tai Chi. Tai Chi is a long game. You're going to be practicing Tai Chi for a long time and it's not something that you can develop a high level of skill in within a year or within two years or even three years because the body has developed, everybody's body has developed muscle tension over the years and Tai Chi it's a long process of trying to unwind and undo all that tension within the body. Relaxation takes time and it also takes time to develop new muscle memory. We also have patterns of movement that have become ingrained in our psyche, they've been ingrained in the body and those patterns of movement are something that we're trying to break out of with Tai Chi. We're trying to develop new patterns of movement, new patterns that are more aligned with the natural flow of the way the body wants to move. So be patient with your Tai Chi, give it time and keep a consistent practice going. Practice one form and I guarantee you're going to get results, you're going to get where you're going. That's it for this video guys, thanks so much for watching. If you'd like some more videos like this please hit the like button and subscribe to this channel if you haven't already and I'll see you in the next video. Thanks for watching.