Why Do We Study Supplemental Exercises
Called Qigong Alongside
Tai Chi Chuan?
Traditionally Qigong has always been taught
alongside Tai Chi Chuan.
These supplemental exercises are known as
Qigong (breath work) and they help us return to a
more natural way to move and breathe.
You see when we're babies we breathe naturally with the abdomen engaging the whole body. You can even see a baby breathe with their whole body.
You can feel a baby grab your finger with tremendous strength, they use their whole body to do that.
As we age we're faced with different stresses that start to accumulate in the body as tension, so we may start to feel tight in the shoulders, the neck, the chest and stomach area. This accumulation of tension may cause our breathing to rise to rise up into the chest (we may lose up to 30% in our breathing capacity) and our movements to get more segmented, unbalanced, and uncoordinated.
We may lose the ability to move, and breathe in a natural way.
Our breathing and our center of gravity may rise up.
Well the good news is that Tai Chi, and it's supplemental exercises will help you return to your natural state again very quickly!
Before Tai Chi and Qigong
After Tai Chi and Qigong
In the figure above the center of gravity is raised. This causes us to restrict our breathing and feel like we are unbalanced.
In the figure above the
center of gravity is lowered.
We start to breathe more deeply and feel more stable in many ways.
When we learn how to breathe with the abdomen again, we can regain up to 30% of our breath capacity. We begin to move in a unified, centered, and
coordinated way.
In a typical class we start with Standing Qigong, We go through a series of different important postures to build our structure with
correct alignments and different ground paths.
Then we use these postures in various Moving Qigong Sets to be able to express these connected movements out to the limbs.
Then in the last part of a typical class, we bring these skills into our
study of the Tai Chi Chuan Form.