Practicing taijiquan - Part One: Setting up a routine.

I can remember the first few taijiquan lessons many years ago. It felt great attending class and I was bubbling with enthusiasm looking forward to my next lesson. Over the next few years I observed many students come and go. Many start taijiquan with the best of intentions and see the value of practicing the Art. However, along the way for various reasons many students eventually fade out from attending lessons. Some reasons are that they don’t have time to practice or it’s difficult to remember the moves. Taijiquan looks easy but without establishing a routine right away, your chances of perseverance is greatly reduced.

These are some recommendations from my own up and downs in practice that I will share over the next few blogs

1. Establishing a Routine: It is most important to establish a routine as quickly as possible while you are enthusiastic about practice. Otherwise, you will soon lose perseverance.
2. Take something out of your life’s routine: This is an important consideration and often overlooked and becomes our biggest mistake that stops practice. Like most of us, we already have a full life routine. Decide right now, what you are going to give up or take out of your daily routine. Therefore, you can put taijiquan practise into your life’s routine. Otherwise, you will quickly find you do not have the time to do what you initially set out to enjoy and quit!
3. Time: Mornings are the best as opposed to night. As you are more likely at night to tell yourself you are tired and will do practice tomorrow. Tomorrow’s practice will never happen if you do not start now. However, if you are definitely a night person then set a night time routine and stick to it. E.G. Finish whatever you are doing at say 10:30 pm then practice for 15 minutes. If your feeling very tired then you should stop what you are doing around 10 pm and then practice. Tell yourself that you are only going to do a maximum of 15 minutes. Set an alarm the moment you begin and finish when it goes off. That way, regardless of how good you feel, you have set up in your mind that this is a good thing to do. This sets up positive conditioning so you are more likely to be motivated to keep up your routinely practice sessions. *
4. Place: It’s important to have a place away from distractions and a little spacious so you don’t have to rearrange the furniture. Otherwise, it can be a block for practice in the future. This should not be too much of a problem, as you initially do not need a lot of room. If practicing in the outdoors do not practice in windy conditions. Head (if you’re bald like me), neck, kidney area and feet need to be warmly covered. Obviously if practising in a hot climate you do not need to be rugged up but these areas still need to feel warm and not cold during practice.  

* In one to two months, when you are in your routine you should practice mornings and night for 15 minutes so you are winding down in the evenings and nourishing your spirit in the mornings. Then in 3 months increase to half an hour.