Tai Chi: Walking for Balance

Video Transcript

"In this segment we are going to begin talking about tai chi walking for balance as we know is a major issue when it comes to the senior population. And there's been many studies done to show that tai chi is very effective for helping with this issue. So one of the ideas that we want to pay attention to is how do we move across the floor. When we do walking most important thing is we stay vertical and know where our weight is. So we start with the weight on the back foot, we want to take our front toe and turn it out a little bit, so that when we move on to that foot we feel very balanced. So I'll come in this direction, turn the toe out then bring the back foot in. Touch with this toe for balance, we always want to make sure we're good with where we are at before we are going, where we're going. And you can keep your toe touching if you need to for balance slide the toe around, touch with your heel. Then move your weight forward. Move your weight back, turn your toe outward, move your weight forward onto that foot. Make sure you are nice and strong here, take your back heel off the ground and slide the toe in. Find your balance here, you can use the toe for balance if you need to. Circle the toe out, replace the toe with the heel. Then move forward touching the toe to the ground with the weight on the front leg. So we shift back, turn the toe out, move forward, making sure you are in a good position and lift the heel slide the foot in. Circle the foot out and come forward."