Losses and Gains

This month there were two topics on our minds. The segue is a little clunky but they can be broadly categorised in to something that is lost and something that is gained.

As with many people when they reach a certain age some of us were in a constant battle with weight, although having applied what we have learned over the years we have reached something of a peace deal. We are careful not to market ourselves as fitness gurus, it must be a nightmare being a personal trainer and constantly having your physique assessed by potential customers. But for our own health and the health of the business we try to a reasonable degree. Due to the pressures of the food industry, sedentary lifestyles and disingenuous information from institutions that should have your best interests in mind, this process of weight gain is starting increasingly early in people’s lives. Tai Chi can assist in weight loss, but it is not necessarily in the way you might think.

Of course more nutritious movement is great for your body and has a calorie burning effect, however it is important to note that your body composition is far more influenced by food than exercise. Broadly speaking you should exercise to get fitter, stronger and happier, and eat for physique. We advocate the middle path for exercise; walking beats running, bodyweight and natural movement beats weights and the gym. The way in which Tai Chi assists weight loss is by being the thing that breaks a cycle for you and gives you the self empowerment to stick with the process. Without wishing to oversimplify (because it can feel overwhelming when you are stuck in an unhealthy cycle) all it takes to get moving and make better eating choices is a boost in self confidence and a shift in mindset. Then once you are in a positive cycle your current body composition becomes a relative moot point, you know you are on a positive trajectory and already feel less sluggish and bloated. Posture is a big change that you can use to break this cycle because you immediately feel more comfortable in your own body with a visible change in the mirror. The image of the golden thread lightly lifting the crown and extending the spine can elicit an instant change. Try it now! Don’t push your body too much, just work with the image and let the physical chips fall where they may.

And now to the gains…

We’re not talking about those kind of gains, weights have never been our thing. Check out our TCE branded resistance bands in the store for a much healthier alternative. What we’re talking about here are gains to a Tai Chi/Energy Work school syllabus.

As a Tai Chi teacher it is of course important to go in to depth in your lessons and encourage students to hammer down on specific moves and principles that assist their development. However a point will come where some variety is healthy, plus different people have different aims and interests. Within your home system there will no doubt be a decent amount of forms and techniques and supplementary exercises. Some systems such as Yin Style Bagua for example have a dizzying amount! So they are there for the taking and may require some practice by the instructor or practitioner to refresh the memory.

Then you have the idea of appropriating methods from other systems. Caution is required here because clashes between methods could slow down progress or worse cause damage to the practitioner. Whilst this is a very real risk we think this is somewhat overplayed, maybe to stop students from drifting away. Some of the greatest achievements of the human race came from synthesis so we are not squeamish about it. Ultimately if you are going to run classes you are going to have to provide variety. It is important to ensure this is done with the correct ethos of safety as well as understanding the context of the method within its home system, so you need a protocol for extracting it. Of course pay due respect to the system from which it came and get necessary permissions if appropriate. Our students are free to explore whatever they want and we will happily discuss integrating it into their practice if it is appropriate to do so. Even if we don’t feel it is appropriate, they are their own people and free to decide based on the information and experience they have.

Finally there is the ultimate Tai Chi heresy; making up your own moves and methods. We could insert a load more caveats here but we would be repeating ourselves. So we will leave the closing words to somebody much more eloquent than ourselves.

‘Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found’

- James Russell Lowell