The next few video clips are explaining effective methods of practice that have been posted before on my facebook site a while ago. I find these interesting to review from time to time. Enjoy :-)

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.

Our sufferings leads to tensions
Tensions block the flow of energy
Blocking the flow of energy exhausts the body
Exhausting the body of energy can lead to lose of awareness
Lose of awareness leads to suffering and injury.
 
When the mind body is at ease we are content. When the mind body is in a state of dis-ease we become discontent for a variety of reasons.
We may first blame others for the way we are feeling, becoming judgmental. Then often we turn our negativity inwards and start to blame ourselves questioning what we do and in particular questioning the effectiveness of our preventative medicines such as Tai Chi Chuan and meditative practices.

When these times arise and you feel the change of state either physically and / or mentally you need to slow down and see this time as part of your practise in your life’s journey.
You should connect back to tan tien, place the mind there and breath.
Move from the head top (nei wan / ba hui) downward listening to your body looking to see if you are tense in the neck, shoulders, chest, abdomen, lower back, etc.

I like to remind myself of the following words which I have synthesized from my teachers:
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Nature’s storms do not last forever and eventually blow themselves out in time. Take solace in that time is your healer and you and the Art are not failures. The Creator does not make mistakes. You are not a faulty broken vessel. Your spirit was born into a vessel of skin and bone that follows form and function in accord with the Tao.

It is said first in the “hsin”( mind), then in the body.
The abdomen relaxes then the “chi” (breath) sinks into the bones
The “shen” (spirit) is relaxed and the body is calm.[1]
 
This is achieved by putting the mind in the tan tien and breathing naturally; long, fine, calm and slow. Breathing smoothly at the cusps of when exchanging between inhale and exhale.
Initially you think it is easy as stated below from the Tao Teh Ching,
 
Relax the mind and fill the abdomen[2]
 
The words above just remain words unless you have a practise to cultivate yourself.
Focus on the tan tein, breath naturally, softly and smoothly through the exchanges from inhale to exhale. Then observe any tension in the body. It may be there it may be not. The key is to practise! I tend to find when under stress my abdomen become tense and my breath is higher up. Sometimes my shoulders slightly rise. Sometimes I don’t detect any tension in the body as I’m consumed with anger or anxiety and just thought label my predominate thought and just breath!
Lao Zu’s fundamental practise of “Emptying the Mind and Filling the Abdomen”, is not about trying to stop thinking or some type of avoidance of thoughts or forcing thoughts out of your mind. This is a type of suppression which will only come back three times fold onto you.

......... More Later..........
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[1] The Essesnce of Tai Chi Chuan by Lo/Inn and Amacker/Foe page 42

[2] Tao Teh Ching “Way Virtue Book” chapter 3 by Lao Tzu.