In Tai Chi & in Qigong, we are always moving forward, backward, left and right. If you can understand the differences and similarities between 'ordinary' walking, and Tai Chi & Qigong walking, it makes learning those arts easier. How you step one pace forward when walking. You place (e.g.) the right heel and move the weight forward towards the ball of the right big toe. As the weight transfers forwards on to the ball of the right foot, the body elongates on a vertical axis.

Whether you are standing upright without moving, or when you put your foot ahead of you on the ground whilst walking, gravity settles or compresses you into the ground. As it does so, a balancing act automatically takes place in the body. In order to achieve perfect balance, whether you are standing either on both feet or on one foot, or even when you are in the process of walking, the body has to align itself vertically with the point of pressure on the feet/foot.

When pushed, you have a choice: 1) Do you allow the energy of that push to meet its target (in this case probably the point on your spine that is level with the arms of the person pushing)? 2) Do you redirect that energy to where YOU want it to go? If the latter, then how do you do it?

The concept of 'Peng' is often explained as feeling as though you are balloon being blown up, or a feeling as though you are simultaneously

If everything is a microcosm of everything else, then when doing tai chi or qigong we need to pay attention to the inter-connectivity of ...

When you first start learning either tai chi or qigong, it's all about learning a set of movements.  For some people, it never goes beyond..

I know a lot of people who, when they hurt themselves, just wait for the problem to get better.  Sometimes this will work, but often it sets

I used to think that the art of learning deportment was a bit of a joke, something to do with being upright in society as well as being upri

The action is therefore like a wave passing down through the major joints of the arm, one after the other; a transference of energy from one

When pushing or pulling an object, we usually tighten muscles automatically. If you want to push something heavy, you compress, If you want

When we walk, we need to create 'full' and 'empty' in the legs.  Most of the time we do it without thinking; it just happens...

One of the first things that beginners can feel is aching legs; they discover that their legs are weaker than they thought. ...

Use your back. The arms need to connect to the body; the action is not one where only the shoulder muscles function.

I know that we can take our arms behind our backs, but, by and large, we use the arms in front of our bodies in nearly everything we do as..

In both in taiji and in qigong there is often the need to raise the knee, either to kick, or perhaps as an exercise for the pelvis, or ...

You often hear the expression that you should stand in both tai chi and qigong as though you are 'suspended by a silk thread'. This is ...

In the same way that the body of the plant does this, we, as humans, need to mimic the same actions with our bodies in order to achieve ...

Shoulder tension is often a problem for people when learning Tai Chi or Qigong; in fact, it’s probably a problem for everybody, whether they

When your head turns, the 7 Cervical Vertebrae in your neck function in a similar way to the spine at your waist. Both have a natural curve

For many people, tension in the neck must be a major cause of so much daily discomfort, this part of the body being one of the major holding