About Tai Chi & Qigong
What is Tai Chi?
Tai Chi is an effective means of exercise with slow, fluid and graceful movements meant to strengthen the body, ease the mind, release tension, and improve overall health and balance.
Benefits of Tai Chi & Qigong
Tai Chi and Qigong have a massive range of benefits.
PHYSICAL HEALTH BENEFITS
Physically, Tai Chi and Qigong can help you cultivate strength, balance, flexibility, aerobic health, aids in counteracting arthritis, recovering from sickness, and the list really goes on and on.
Here are just some of the physical health benefits that have been demonstrated through research:
Improve COPD symptoms
Live longer
Improve muscle strength, balance, and flexibility
Lower body balance, strength, and flexibility
Boost cognitive function
Get better night-time sleep quality
Improve symptoms of fibromyalgia
See improvements in cardiovascular fitness
Improve aerobic capacity
Reduce the risk of falls
MENTAL & EMOTIONAL BENEFITS
Mentally and emotionally, it can help you relax and hone in on a deeper sense of calm and poise. When you’re grounded and balanced, you recalibrate your mind/body/spirit connection and reduce stress to better handle challenging situations.
Here is a small list of some of the potential mental and emotional benefits:
Increase cognitive function
Boosts self-esteem
Reduced stress
Reduced anxiety
Reduces depression and mood disturbances
Increase in overall sense of acceptance and joy
Improved focus
TESTIMONIAL
“I’ve improved my ability to care for myself and have developed more positive self-esteem.
My balance, both physically and mentally, has improved.”
-Nic D., Tacoma, WA
What are the methods we use?
Qigong
The word “Qi” has many meanings, but first among them is life energy and breath. You can think of Qi as the general quality of your life and well-being. “Gong” means attention or dedicated time spent with something. So literally, qigong means energy work, or dedicated time and attention towards nurturing energy or breath and its quality.
Qigong is an entire wing of Traditional Chinese Medicine and can be applied to nearly anything that ails you. When someone says they practice Qigong, in general, they mean they’re practicing an art meant to create greater health and well-being in themselves.
There are, of course, a tremendous number of benefits that come from opening the energy channels of the body and learning to circulate your energy throughout the various parts of the body/mind.
It gets the blood and lymph circulating
Calms the nervous system
Helps you regulate yourself through breath and mindfulness
Tai Chi Chuan
Tai Chi Chuan (aka Tai Chi) is characterized by the practice of slow, fluid, and graceful movements meant to strengthen the body and mind as well as to release any and all tension in the body. Tai Chi is the ultimate source and limit of reality, from which springs Yin and Yang in all their variations and manifestations.
Tai Chi is an internal style of Chinese martial arts that utilizes fluid movements, relaxation, and the opponent's energy and force against them. We seek to become one with that which opposes us to turn the situation in our favor.
Tai Chi has the potential to be one of the most effective means of exercise you can do that serves your whole wellbeing.
Tui Shou & San Shou
Tui Shou translates to “pushing hands” and is a two-person training method used to develop the timing, sensitivity, and mind state necessary to be calm and effective in a self defense, or really any, stressful situation.
San Shou roughly translates to “fighting form”, or “dividing hands”, or “separating hands.” You can think of it as the bridge between Tui Shou and the actual fighting elements of the art. It’s a form that helps to develop timing and applications for self-defense and actual fighting. While San Shou helps to build you into a fighter, we use the practice to develop ourselves and our ability to stay centered, and harmonious under stress and conflict.
The skills that come along with the study and practice of Tuishou and San Shou are useful for almost every athletic activity you could possibly do.
Pushing hands helps you cultivate a level of physical and energetic sensitivity that is difficult to achieve with other methods.
These sorts of awareness can be applied to martial arts, healing work, or any activity where hand sensitivity or body awareness is important.
