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Any new martial arts student will tell you that they are sore in places they didn’t know they could be sore, and that they felt more tired than usual their first week in class. The paradox is that once you get into a routine, you probably have more energy because of your exercise habit than you did when you just went home, sat down, and watched TV or played video games.
Reaping the benefits of this kind of practice takes something most of us struggle with: patience.
You have to be willing to go through some fatigue, soreness, and truthfully some doubt for a while as to whether or not you can actually DO this thing.
“What have I gotten myself into?!” may cross your mind.
Martial arts practice, IMHO, is one of those paths in life that lead you to become the whole human you were meant to be. Years ago my sister attended a kung fu and tai chi demonstration offered by the Austin Nei Wai Chia School – my instructor’s school. She was moved almost to tears by the time the demo had finished, and her comment was that watching the students move through their routines made her feel that she was watching human beings as they were intended to be.
I knew what she meant. My peers were supple, strong, focused, disciplined and fully present in their movements. The whole person was involved in the demonstration of impressive skill.
How did they get to that level of ability and presence?
Patience!
Most of us WANT to embrace the virtue of patience. The problem is we want it right now! What’s missing that would motivate us to have the patience it takes to study something like martial arts all the way to Black Belt (and beyond)?
Passion! Not necessarily the kind you get on a date with that special cute person, but an inner drive that moves and motivates action.
When I was growing up, my elders preached patience. They were right, of course, but they forgot to tell me that it was more fun if coupled with the fire of passion for what you are doing.
What makes one person passionate about a thing while others remain in apathy? The difference seems to lie in deeper understanding. The more you know about anything, the more fun it is to study – or play with – at a deeper level.
Life itself – simply breathing and being – is worthy of passion if you understand it at a deeper level – understand what a gift it really is.
If the idea of martial arts practice speaks to you, inspires you, resolve to develop the patience to follow that passion throughout your life. One day – sooner than you think – you will realize that soreness and fatigue are either nonexistent or irrelevant, and your passion will have taken you to a higher level of yourself – a level of full presence in the moment and full immersion of all of you into your life.
That’s great holistic living!
Juli Hartmann
Master Instructor and Owner
Texas Holistic Arts Center / Sacred Source
For more information about martial arts classes, tai chi classes, kickboxing classes, kung fu classes, massage, Reiki and holistic healing in Leander, Texas, visit http://www.texasholistics.com, or feel free to call us at 512-778-5778
Texas Holistic Arts Center offers kung fu, tai chi chuan, kickboxing, yoga, massage, Reiki and special workshops, including weaponry and Reiki instruction. www.texasholistics.com or www.TexasNWC.com
Copyright © Juli Hartmann 2009
Monday, March 29, 2010
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Tai Chi and Dynamic Tension
Tai Chi looks like it couldn’t hurt a fly. It also looks like its practitioners must be weaklings – it’s slow and soft, right?
In my last article I talked about the benefits of relaxation. This time I’m addressing the opposite approach.
I think ALL of my articles on Tai Chi mention that its full name is actually Tai Chi Chuan – literally, grand ultimate fist – and that it was first and foremost a very effective martial art. I’ll not neglect to mention that just one more time here.
Now I also want to talk about what great exercise Tai Chi is. For the most part, Tai Chi is practiced slowly, and with good reason. This cultivates precision in the practitioner’s movements. It is also usually performed in a very relaxed manner – and the more relaxed, the better. This encourages good circulation and discourages unnecessary tension that undermines efficient movement, and ultimately undermines speed.
Tensing up makes you slow.
But tensing up also makes you strong. You can’t exercise and stay totally relaxed.
Tai Chi is actually pretty good exercise even when you’re relaxed and moving slowly. The stance work, postures and upper body movements offer good, weight-bearing exercise, improving balance, bone density, efficiency of movement and overall strength.
Take this practice and add exaggerated muscle tension, and you have the makings of what might be the perfect exercise.
“Dynamic Tension,” thus dubbed and registered as a trademark by Charles Atlas, involves resisting your own movements with antagonistic muscle tension. Movement is necessarily rather slow, but results in very intense exercise. Imagine doing curls with no weight, but you pretend you are lifting 1,000 pounds. The biceps are in maximum tension, and are resisted by triceps tension. The negative phase works the same way in reverse, and you get benefit in both muscles.
That’s great for your arms, but it’s an isolated exercise. If you practice Tai Chi with dynamic tension, you do your best to keep every muscle in your body tensed throughout the form. If you’re not used to this kind of practice, choose a short form to start out, or practice one section at a time. Tai Chi uses muscles you didn’t know you had when you were just lifting weights and running. So easy does it at first. Use the same parsing principle I talked about in the last article addressing relaxation, speed and combat practice.
After a time, as with anything else you build strength and endurance that makes this kind of workout easier to complete. It's more fun than isometrics, and it can really build the muscles.
Regular practice of Dynamic Tension in Tai Chi, in addition to your normal, relaxed practice can make you the Mr. or Ms. Olympia of the Tai Chi world!
Juli Hartmann
Master Instructor and Owner
Texas Holistic Arts Center / Sacred Source
For more information about martial arts classes, tai chi classes, kickboxing classes, kung fu classes, massage, Reiki and holistic healing in Leander, Texas, visit http://www.texasholistics.com, or feel free to call us at 512-778-5778
Texas Holistic Arts Center offers kung fu, tai chi chuan, kickboxing, yoga, massage, Reiki and special workshops, including weaponry and Reiki instruction. www.texasholistics.com or www.TexasNWC.com
Copyright © Juli Hartmann 2009
In my last article I talked about the benefits of relaxation. This time I’m addressing the opposite approach.
I think ALL of my articles on Tai Chi mention that its full name is actually Tai Chi Chuan – literally, grand ultimate fist – and that it was first and foremost a very effective martial art. I’ll not neglect to mention that just one more time here.
Now I also want to talk about what great exercise Tai Chi is. For the most part, Tai Chi is practiced slowly, and with good reason. This cultivates precision in the practitioner’s movements. It is also usually performed in a very relaxed manner – and the more relaxed, the better. This encourages good circulation and discourages unnecessary tension that undermines efficient movement, and ultimately undermines speed.
Tensing up makes you slow.
But tensing up also makes you strong. You can’t exercise and stay totally relaxed.
Tai Chi is actually pretty good exercise even when you’re relaxed and moving slowly. The stance work, postures and upper body movements offer good, weight-bearing exercise, improving balance, bone density, efficiency of movement and overall strength.
Take this practice and add exaggerated muscle tension, and you have the makings of what might be the perfect exercise.
“Dynamic Tension,” thus dubbed and registered as a trademark by Charles Atlas, involves resisting your own movements with antagonistic muscle tension. Movement is necessarily rather slow, but results in very intense exercise. Imagine doing curls with no weight, but you pretend you are lifting 1,000 pounds. The biceps are in maximum tension, and are resisted by triceps tension. The negative phase works the same way in reverse, and you get benefit in both muscles.
That’s great for your arms, but it’s an isolated exercise. If you practice Tai Chi with dynamic tension, you do your best to keep every muscle in your body tensed throughout the form. If you’re not used to this kind of practice, choose a short form to start out, or practice one section at a time. Tai Chi uses muscles you didn’t know you had when you were just lifting weights and running. So easy does it at first. Use the same parsing principle I talked about in the last article addressing relaxation, speed and combat practice.
After a time, as with anything else you build strength and endurance that makes this kind of workout easier to complete. It's more fun than isometrics, and it can really build the muscles.
Regular practice of Dynamic Tension in Tai Chi, in addition to your normal, relaxed practice can make you the Mr. or Ms. Olympia of the Tai Chi world!
Juli Hartmann
Master Instructor and Owner
Texas Holistic Arts Center / Sacred Source
For more information about martial arts classes, tai chi classes, kickboxing classes, kung fu classes, massage, Reiki and holistic healing in Leander, Texas, visit http://www.texasholistics.com, or feel free to call us at 512-778-5778
Texas Holistic Arts Center offers kung fu, tai chi chuan, kickboxing, yoga, massage, Reiki and special workshops, including weaponry and Reiki instruction. www.texasholistics.com or www.TexasNWC.com
Copyright © Juli Hartmann 2009
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Tai Chi Chuan: Pacing and Parsing
Tai Chi is a beautiful art. Its slow, graceful movements are a pleasure to watch, and a pleasure to practice. From the smooth, hypnotic pace of Yang to the combat-ready Sanduk form, Tai Chi is great stuff! And it’s great for health. But wait – there’s more…
Because Tai Chi Chuan (“grand ultimate fist”) started as a martial art, any of the forms can be adapted to combat techniques. But why do people practice so slowly? You can’t fight at that turtle pace, can you?
Only if your opponent is a turtle.
There is an old saying in the martial arts: “If you want to move quickly, practice moving slowly. If you want to move like lightning, practice standing still.” Stillness teaches relaxation, and the more you relax, the less your antagonistic muscles are fighting what you want to do. Thus speed improves.
The slow, even pace of Tai Chi lends itself well to learning the skill of relaxing. In the same way, absolute stillness of body and mind allows readiness for quick action, mentally and/or physically. Now, your body and mind can get only so still. If your heart or brain stops entirely, you’re in trouble. But relaxing – letting go of tension and distracting thoughts – allows our mind and body to do what they were meant to do when we’re not fighting ourselves with worry or tension.
Tai Chi practice lets us approach this state. We repeat the movements so many times that our mind is no longer involved in the process: the body remembers and simply moves without much conscious effort. Some people get so good at this that they almost literally do Tai Chi in their sleep, or at least a deep meditative state such as alpha or theta. Now that’s relaxed!
Do we want to practice Tai Chi only at a turtle’s pace? In my opinion, no we don’t. Especially when a beginning student is trying to remember the sequence of a form, going that slowly can undermine our natural memory processes. Some people will never learn a form going that slowly – too much time for distraction while they’re getting wound up for the next move.
And as we mentioned before, nobody fights at that pace. So sometimes it’s a good idea to use explosive pacing to simulate combat. How many moves you do in a row at this pace is up to you – that’s what I mean by parsing – breaking the form into smaller parts and thus analyzing the "syntax" (structure) of the form.
You can also use dynamic tension, which will be covered in another article.
So keep reading! And keep practicing your Tai Chi, like a turtle and like a wildcat!
Juli Hartmann
Master Instructor and Owner
Texas Holistic Arts Center / Sacred Source
For more information about martial arts classes, tai chi classes, kickboxing classes, kung fu classes, massage, Reiki and holistic healing in Leander, Texas, visit http://www.texasholistics.com, or feel free to call us at 512-778-5778
Texas Holistic Arts Center offers kung fu, tai chi chuan, kickboxing, yoga, massage, Reiki and special workshops, including weaponry and Reiki instruction. www.texasholistics.com
Also visit www.SacredSourceHealing.com
Copyright © Juli Hartmann 2009
Because Tai Chi Chuan (“grand ultimate fist”) started as a martial art, any of the forms can be adapted to combat techniques. But why do people practice so slowly? You can’t fight at that turtle pace, can you?
Only if your opponent is a turtle.
There is an old saying in the martial arts: “If you want to move quickly, practice moving slowly. If you want to move like lightning, practice standing still.” Stillness teaches relaxation, and the more you relax, the less your antagonistic muscles are fighting what you want to do. Thus speed improves.
The slow, even pace of Tai Chi lends itself well to learning the skill of relaxing. In the same way, absolute stillness of body and mind allows readiness for quick action, mentally and/or physically. Now, your body and mind can get only so still. If your heart or brain stops entirely, you’re in trouble. But relaxing – letting go of tension and distracting thoughts – allows our mind and body to do what they were meant to do when we’re not fighting ourselves with worry or tension.
Tai Chi practice lets us approach this state. We repeat the movements so many times that our mind is no longer involved in the process: the body remembers and simply moves without much conscious effort. Some people get so good at this that they almost literally do Tai Chi in their sleep, or at least a deep meditative state such as alpha or theta. Now that’s relaxed!
Do we want to practice Tai Chi only at a turtle’s pace? In my opinion, no we don’t. Especially when a beginning student is trying to remember the sequence of a form, going that slowly can undermine our natural memory processes. Some people will never learn a form going that slowly – too much time for distraction while they’re getting wound up for the next move.
And as we mentioned before, nobody fights at that pace. So sometimes it’s a good idea to use explosive pacing to simulate combat. How many moves you do in a row at this pace is up to you – that’s what I mean by parsing – breaking the form into smaller parts and thus analyzing the "syntax" (structure) of the form.
You can also use dynamic tension, which will be covered in another article.
So keep reading! And keep practicing your Tai Chi, like a turtle and like a wildcat!
Juli Hartmann
Master Instructor and Owner
Texas Holistic Arts Center / Sacred Source
For more information about martial arts classes, tai chi classes, kickboxing classes, kung fu classes, massage, Reiki and holistic healing in Leander, Texas, visit http://www.texasholistics.com, or feel free to call us at 512-778-5778
Texas Holistic Arts Center offers kung fu, tai chi chuan, kickboxing, yoga, massage, Reiki and special workshops, including weaponry and Reiki instruction. www.texasholistics.com
Also visit www.SacredSourceHealing.com
Copyright © Juli Hartmann 2009
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