How to use Tai Chi to promote resilience!

Modern Tai Chi is a healing form of mindful movement drawn from ancient Daoist martial arts, and it's the perfect practice for developing resilience!

The research is in, the practice of tai chi promotes balance, coordination, muscle and joint health, even pain relief!  All these add up to a more resilient body, but did you know that tai chi can also give you a more resilient heart and mind?

It's not just because of the rhythmic movements and slow breathing, those carry powerful calmative effects and are well known in arts like yoga and qigong as well.  What makes tai chi unique, though is its martial arts origins.

The original tai chi, the "Thirteen Postures", was not just a prescribed choreography that you learn and memories, but a repertoire of "energies" by which the martial artist would respond to attack.  These might include advancing, yielding, "squeezing", and more.  These principles still function in martial arts, but we can also use them for our psycho-emotional health. 

By practicing these "movement archetypes" with our bodies, we get used to inhabiting all kinds of different states in our hearts and minds as well.

Because we've expanded our inner repertoire, when life throws us a curve ball, we're more capable to respond, rather than just react.  Our tai chi practice results in an ability to ground and come from our center in all kinds of novel circumstances.

If this sounds beneficial to you, get signed up for our Winter Semester of Tai Chi that's happening IN PERSON, and ONLINE starting this Saturday, 1/27.  We'll be going through the first section of the Yang Style Short Form, which contains all 13 energies, as well as a few more unique movement archetypes you'll love embodying.  The class is welcoming and the practice is harmonizing.  I can't wait to see you there!