For those who have health problems or weak physical condition the Tai Chi Kung Practice will improve their physical condition and help regain health. But all those who are healthy and well fit may keep up their good physical condition and prevent any sickness by practicing tai chi.
TAI CHI KUNG is not at all difficult
First short answer in short points.
Tai Chi practice is first of all recomended for those who are interested in
- excercise
- health
- energizing excercises (Chi Kung), their life energy improvement.
- meditation
- Martial Arts and self defence
- Preparing for difficult and challenging situations of contest.
- art, aesthetics, movement, dance
- Philosophy
- ecology
- peace for the world and within ourselves
- Ability to cooperate and help others
- in the wide contecst of studies of Chinese culture, relations between this culture and the culture of other nations and our life, at this moment and in this place where we are now.</ul>
At the biginning we are usually interested in one of abovementioned aspects. For example regaining health or learning self defence. Then we are drawn deeper in the practice, we start seeing relations between different aspects of life even seemingly opposing, such as searching for peace and health while at the same time learning martial arts. Also combining physical excersises with a philosophy seems illogical, but only at the beggining of practicing. Later on we begin to notice wider relations between the excersises we practice and our life and our vision of the world.
To start practicing Tai Chi you do not need to have any special movement abilities nor psychological predispositions. What you need is the will to work on yourself, the wish to work in a group under the guidance of a teacher. For those with a complex about their low physical proficiency we can only say, that our classes in Warsaw were regularly attended by pregnant wemen (up untill 9th month, and after giving birth they soon returned to the practice), by disabled people and people with Cerebral palsy. On one of our summer Camps we had a boy on a wheelchair, who practiced with much gasto in a sitting position.
Practice of Father Form by a lake in Jabłończa in year 2007
People physically fit , athletic also practice Tai Chi. Practice enables them to view their health and physical fitness from a wider angle, helps develop previously neglected aspects.
Physically fit people can learn :
- how to use strength and physical condition they already possess.
- how to use only those groups of muscles that are necessary in a certain movement.
- how to execute a movement to avoid contusion.
- how to properly manage body strength.
- and above all how to acquire peace of mind and body relaxation.
Form of Rhinoceros tranforming into Fire Dragon. The Father Form. Żegary, year 2008
Age is also not a limitation in practice. Young, middle aged as well as elder people are practicing Tai Chi.
It is specially advisable for those with health, life's or other kind of problems to start practicing. Also those who would like to avoid problems in the future are advised to start. Because the practice may help us cope with life, make our body fit, relaxed and strenghten it. And practice will prepare us to solve life's problems. Recognizing our limitations should enourage us to further practice instead of being the cause for disillusion and a reason to abandon active work on self improvement.
There is no obligation to perform all the movements during practice. Also each movement should be executed just below the limit of our body and mind capabilities and no more. It is us who decide how much we are ready to gain from the abundance offered by practicing. Too much ambition and excessive overloading of the body are not recomended in the practice. And the oposite: laziness of the mind and body, incomplete and inaccurate executing of the movements, is possible of course, but does not produce all those positive effects as the practice should.
To sum it up: if we have some health problems or low physical condition, the Tai Chi Kung practice is aimed to improve our condition and regain health. If, on the other hand, we are perfectly healthy and physically fit then through the practice we may stay healthy and fit and prevent eventual sicknesses. People who aspire higher than that can find in Tai Chi Kung a way to accomplish their goals. In physical aspect, the forms can be executed to make the body work harder, for example, by taking lower positions.
The same applies to meditation , philosophical or energetic aspects of the practice. Progress depends entirely on ourselves. The teacher provides the method, tested and proven by many generations of teachers and pupils, but the actual effort must be undertaken by ourselves alone. Also alone, however assisted by teacher and other practitioners, we set direction to our practice and our consecutive goals.