What Style of Tai Chi Do I Teach, and Where Does it Come From?

Welcome back mind-body students! 

Many people ask me what style of tai chi I use to produce the forms for my courses and books. It’s a great question.

The short answer is simple: most of the tai chi that I teach comes from the Yang style. There are exceptions even in my most popular books and courses, however. The move “Grind,” for example, comes from the Chen style of tai chi.

A unique innovation that I have made in my teachings is doing the forms twice each: once to one side, and then the other side immediately after. This isn’t common in the Yang style of tai chi, or at least in the 108 traditional tai chi forms I learned.

While doing the forms the traditional way is great, I always felt that doubling up on each form allowed you to accomplish some important things for modern tai chi practice. First, it reduced the number of forms you needed to memorize, but still gave you a full tai chi ‘exercise.’ Second, it emphasizes balance in the body, which I believe leads to both better health and higher performance in martial arts.

But many times the reason that students will ask me about the tai chi form I teach is because they are curious about how many forms there are, and where they came from. I don’t know all of the history, but I do know a little bit.

The first style of tai chi was created by Chen, Bu of the Chen family. The Chen family kept its tai chi chuan (martial arts form of tai chi) a family secret for 14 generations. Then, in the early 18th century, Yang Lu Chan, who had stomach problems that he believed could be treated with tai chi chuan teachings, began acting as the Chen family servant.

One night, Yang Lu Chan was discovered practicing in secret by Master Chen. Chen when so impressed by Yang’s level of skill and motivation that he decided to break the four hundred year tradition and accept a non-Chen family member as a student.

Yang learned and practiced with Chen for 18 years, and then returned to his hometown to teach his own form of tai chi: Yang style. Then his oldest son, Yang Pan Hou (1837-1892), taught Wu, Quan You, who would go on to found Wu style tai chi.

Today, there are five major styles of tai chi, each named after the family that founded them and preserved them. Chen style, Yang style, Wu (or Wu/Hao) style, Yu style, and Sun style. Yang is the most popular around the world.

Although the physical movements differ between each style of tai chi, there are deep similarities with regard to the meditative, internal skills that are emphasized. Unfortunately, much of what connects these practices, namely the energetic theory and martial arts applications, have not been passed down to many students in this last century.

I often say about tai chi, “It may take you 10 to 15 years to become a master, but it could take you 30 years to fine one.” That’s the reason I traveled from Israel to Boston in 1983 to study with Dr. Yang Jwing Ming. And after 25 years of studying and practicing with him (and a few other great teachers in areas such as yoga) I feel that I have the experience required to teach. If you are looking for a teacher outside my area, try very hard to find one with as much experience under true masters as I have (or even more!).

I won’t lie, it is very hard to find. The next best thing is probably to study the work of someone with that level of experience, and learn to mimic them, while also diving into the meditation practices and energetic theory. That is why I wrote my books Sunrise Tai Chi and Sunset Tai Chi. They are also available in DVD form so you can follow along on your TV.

And of course, there are always my blog videos! Here are a few for you to try today. Don't forget to share the blog with your friends and family!

Happy Stretching!

Office Exercise Series: Elbows Over and Behind

Hello again, mind-body students!

We continue with our second new installment in the Office Exercise Series this week, moving on two a two-part stretch that you can call "Elbows Over and Behind."

This stretch is great for relaxing the whole upper body, as well as beating that regular 2-3pm slump that many people who work in offices get. Rejuvenate your energy stores and focus your mind by doing these two exercises and you'll see results in no time!

Office Exercise Series: Chair Twist for Energy and Immunity

Welcome back mind-body students!

You may recall the office exercise series we did on the blog a while back, which focused on keeping you productive and healthy at work. Well, we've got even more exercises for you to try at the office when you're taking a break and re-energizing to get more done.

This week, it's the chair twist! A great way to take stress off your lower back, improve posture, help regulate energy and focus, and keep your immune system working as it should.

Remember to breath deep!

Can't Meditate? Clean Your Room!

People ask me some variation of this question all the time: "Are there any tips you have for how to meditate? I just can't get my mind to sit still no matter what I try."

And the answer is "Of course I have tips for how to meditate!" I've written about them on the blog before. I've written about them so much, in fact, that I have a whole category of posts dedicated to meditation tips.

But all those tips are about how you meditate, or what you should do while meditating. What if I told you that you could do something before meditating that could improve your meditation practice? It might seem strange, but this really works.

Clean your room. Or even better, clean your whole house.

You might be thinking, "What? I close my eyes when I meditate. I can't even see if my house is messy or not." But that's not completely true. Your mind internalizes the area that you live in. Even if you aren't paying attention to the mess, when you are in a messy house your mind functions differently (and not in a good way).

In fact, there are several studies now showing that a cleaner home can lower your risk of heart disease, reduce stress hormone levels, and improve sleep. How interesting that all of these benefits are also benefits of regular meditation.

The reality is that your mind worries about the mess in your home. That mess makes you stressed and scatter-brained, which leads to an even messier house. It is a vicious cycle.

Luckily, most people find cleaning their living space to be very easy. A chore, yes, but an easy one. It isn't like meditation, which takes a while to become proficient in. Nearly everyone knows how to clean a space up.

As soon as your local landscape is more organized and orderly, you will find that your mind is more focused and relaxed. And one of the secrets to meditation is that relaxed and focused minds are better at it than messy and scattered ones. That's why many people find meditation so difficult at first. It's a lot like exercise in that way: it's difficult at first because you haven't done any, but the only way to improve is to keep practicing.

But hey, if you can get a boost just by cleaning up your house, that's good too.

Happy Stretching!

Dissolving Your Persona Through the Face

Each person who we deal with in life sees certain faces of ours at certain times. These faces we use, usually five or six of them, help us get the things we want. Most of the way we communicate is non-verbally. The people you speak with figure out how you are feeling, and what you want, by watching your face.

Unconsciously, you know this. So you make the faces that will help communicate. Everyone does this with their face, and even though you don't notice it, you are reading peoples' faces all the time.

For example: You want your kids to do something. Maybe they need to clean their room and you tell them as much. When you are speaking to them, you will probably have an expression that communicates authority. That's your "authority face." Or maybe you have had a long day at work, so you ask your spouse for a massage. You aren't going to use your "authority face" for that, because it won't work. Instead, you use your "sweet face."

Because everyone's life is different, some more difficult than others, our faces can be molded by the expressions that we make over and over. Some people look like they are frowning even when they are not sad. Others look like they are smiling when they aren't actually happy. Sometimes people are born this way, sometimes it is because the person has spent a lot of time frowning or smiling.

As people get to know you, and as you continue to make certain expressions, your personas develop. This is how people will recognize you, because you use these personas frequently around them. When you use a different persona than usual with someone, it may bother them. They will tell you "You don't seem like yourself."

We spend a lot of energy keeping up these personas, and it is healthy and liberating to let go of them for a little while and exist as purely as possible. The best technique for doing this is the Face Meditation. To really experience the melting-away sensation in your soft tissues, combine this with the Sunset Meditation in order to cooling the energy from head and face and better relax the muscles.

By visualizing the melting of the "icy" layers of the face into water and steam, and pulling the fiery face energy down the energetic baton and into the lower energy center, you are removing the distraction that your personas create and shifting your consciousness from "persona" or "image" focused to "body" focused.

Because your lower energy center can't hold "authority" or "sweetness" or "shyness" and so on, your mind will naturally let those facades go as it moves from the head to the lower abdomen. You will be centered in your body, and experience an energetic, even enlightening feeling.

Feel free to practice other visualizations that might help you in this process. Once you have practiced this, you can even do it briefly throughout the day to de-stress.

Happy Stretching!

Breathe Easier: Tai Chi Inspired Techniques

This week, I have a very short blog post here on the website because I did some guest content on a website called www.wellforce.org, an online resource put together by a community of hospitals and medical centers to provide better health care to people in Massachusetts.

I encourage all of you to check out the Wellforce website and read about them. And while you are at it, you can read the special content about breathing easier that I provided for them, including Counting Breath meditations and "progressive relaxing" practice.

I hope you enjoy! And Happy Stretching!