Tai Chi: Walking for Balance Tips

Video Transcript

"In this segment we're going to continue with the idea of tai chi walking for balance. Now as I said in the last segment that being centered and knowing where your weight is are two critical components in keeping your balance. Two other very critical components are to mainly to keep calm and relaxed. To lower your center of gravity. When we are anxious or upset or uptight our energy rises so it's like an upside down pyramid. So we have to make sure we breathe when we do any type of walking or balance. And the other is to develop leg strength. So if we want to increase our balance, we have to work on having stronger leg muscles. So to continue with the tai chi walking with the breath, we just nice and gentle inhale and then move forward, exhale. You could keep your hands here, you could keep them by your sides. Many people keep them here for balance. You move back inhale, turn move forward exhale. Bring your foot in if you can lift it up, if not slide the foot to maintain your balance. Circle the foot out and we always touch with our heel in tai chi. That's natural walking and then slowly bring your weight forward. What we want to try and avoid to do as we do tai chi walking mainly is to not look down. If you look down, if I'm looking down to see what my feet are doing I am already leaning forward. If I am leaning forward I'm already on my way to falling down. So the most important thing you can do with tai chi walking for balance is to maintain vertical center line."