Tai Chi Partner Exercises

Series Summary

Tai chi is an ancient practice that originated in China. It has been practiced and adapted throughout the years to encompass many different styles. Tai chi is now taught through out the West but mainly as a form of exercise and meditation. Since tai chi is grounded in martial arts it does have some martial application but is now mainly taught for its other rewards. By learning to do tai chi you can improve numerous things. You can improve you balance and flexibility while taking in the therapeutic benefits. In this video series our expert will demonstrate tai chi and its push and pull techniques and exercises. You will learn different breathing techniques that will be used in while doing tai chi. The videos will instruct you how to then shift your body weight, have correct body posture, and visualize as you do tai chi. Once you have these basic you will then be ready to learn the various forms and exercises.

Video Transcript

"Hello. In this series we'll be discussing Tai Chi push hands and partner exercises. From my opinion the main idea of why we do push hands and partner exercises is they are a bridge between our individual form work and our martial arts application and the application into our daily life. So, the idea is we are taking what we've already worked on and we're testing it so to speak in a very controlled, safe environment so that we're bringing in another variable of another human being, another energy, another set of movement. What happens is when we do push hands and partner exercises is basically it shows up and magnifies everything we're doing wrong within our forms. So, if we're doing something in our form that is only a little bit off that we don't notice when we get into push hands we will notice it. So, it brings our awareness to mistakes that we are making regularly in our Tai Chi form. Then it also helps us to come into the martial application, because we get used to being sensitive and sensitizing ourselves to incoming force, what direction it going and how it affects our bodies."