7 Reasons Why I Regularly Practice Tai Chi

It’s been about three years since I started practicing Tai Chi. To an outsider, it might seem like a peculiar exercise performed by elderly people in American and Chinese parks, with unclear rules and even more ambiguous benefits.

When someone goes for a morning run, exercises to get moving, or takes cold dips, they are consciously working with their body. They strengthen muscles, increase stamina, or build resilience. However, relaxed, conscious, and slow movements are in direct contrast to most sports. What could possibly be the goal and motivation for such an hour-long session?

In today’s article, I will try to answer for myself and explain a bit about what this is all about. I’ll also attempt to illustrate (at least for me) the process of understanding this exercise and ultimately, understanding myself.

More experienced practitioners will surely laugh; my text is incomplete and simplistic. Many beginners don’t really know why they are practicing for the first half year. Personally, and I believe for others too, such a simplified view of the beginning of training would have been very helpful, which is why I am writing it.

Video: Transformation of a person after 6 months of intensive Tai Chi training in China.

Why practice Tai Chi?

1. Relaxation of Body and Reduction of Tension

Surprisingly, Tai Chi can achieve many goals. Like family, education, or business, spirituality is another path that can be explored and where goals can be set.

However, the absolute foundation that all practitioners reach is about relaxing the body and reducing tension. The vast majority of people (90% in my opinion) never move beyond this area and do not progress further. Theory says that energy only flows through relaxed pathways. Where we are tense or blocked, we cannot feel or utilize qi, and we are also very vulnerable.

It’s possible to work on all body parts and release tension. But it’s not a matter of one afternoon. We carry tension throughout our lives and accumulate more through everyday activities, and although regular practice helps with relaxation, resolving some issues takes years.

Having sat intensely at a computer for 20 years, the most problematic areas for me are my shoulders and lumbar spine. After the first few months of training, I realized that my legs are also very weak and neglected, and there’s an extreme emphasis on the head and upper body. This is roughly the picture for many other intellectually working people. Simply put, we are too “up top” and don’t consider what’s “below” as significant.

2. Elimination of Back Pain

I still feel tension in my shoulders even after years of practice. It is something that is gradually improving, but has not completely disappeared even after 200 training sessions, seminars, and hundreds of home practice sessions. Throughout the day, I often catch myself with stiff shoulders.

On the other hand, a few years ago, I had very unpleasant conditions with my cervical spine. Twice a month, I had to take painkillers due to unbearable headaches and spend half a day in bed. With training, my body mobility has significantly improved.

Since Tai Chi is originally a Chinese martial art, you will encounter many harsh lessons that only the Chinese can teach. When I looked into a few “motivational books”, I learned that understanding in Tai Chi can be achieved in about 20 years of daily practice and meditation. Alternatively, the Chinese like to say that daily practice is like stacking sheets of paper on top of each other. Individual practices won’t bring anything revolutionary, but after years of training, it’s that 2-meter-high stack of experience that finally becomes visible.

From this, a few conclusions can be drawn.

Everything I tell you here, I still tell from the perspective of a beginner who has only managed the first few kilometers of an extremely long journey. Newcomers to Tai Chi don’t understand this and often say after the initial conversation, “Oh, you’ve been practicing for 3 years, so you basically know everything?” This has never been said to me in Tai Chi, even by those who have practiced for 10 years. You have a lifetime to learn.

A deeper understanding of the practice comes only after a very long time. I have read from various motivational gurus about the 10,000-hour rule. And it’s probably not far from the truth.

On the other hand, the back stops hurting relatively quickly. And physical improvement occurs very soon, which is good news for anyone who wants to start doing something with themselves.

3. A Different Social Group

We live in the world of social networks. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or TikTok feed us what we want to see and what we are most likely to click on. They feed us what resonates with us. I am a rational person, and I have trouble understanding esoteric things, and I must honestly admit that some people are just too much for me.

Not everyone, because in our course, let’s say there are 3 types of people:

• Ezo – angels and tie-dyed skirts, too much feeling and little reality.
• Burnouts and hard-working people, a lot of reality and little feeling.
• Those who are looking for some form of knowledge and are not alien to other methods including psychedelics.

Well, if I were to place my thinking politically somewhere to the right, I enjoy entrepreneuring and understand what it means to take care of myself, I would hardly find a bigger contrast in some types of people. Conspiratorial theories, esoteric matters, and complaints about the current government are common topics of discussion in the locker rooms, making me wonder if I should take them seriously at all.

This bothered me initially, later I took it as a necessary part of the exercise, and today I even like these people in my own way. I have not changed my setting, just learned to be more tolerant and continuously remind myself that these people are not evil, just different. They have accepted me among them, and it is clear that I am also different to them in many respects. But I do not engage in most discussions.

4. Self-Discovery on a Different Level

My motivation, with which I went to the first Tai Chi training, was to start taking better care of myself and appreciate myself more. And as I wrote at the beginning, I started to move more, eat better, and practice Tai Chi – which can be likened to some form of moving meditation.

The benefits of Tai Chi may sound very vague to someone who values the world of performance and efficiency.

To come to some form of knowledge, you have to figure out for yourself in various strange exercises what you are doing wrong or how you respond to different stimuli with immediate reactions that are not governed by reason.

But to the point.

• Many exercises in pairs are very personal. They are about getting to know someone through body movement, mutual tuning, which involves reacting to a stimulus, which often cannot be done without touching, for example, hands or looking into the eyes of people you do not know at all. This is especially uncomfortable for anyone at the beginning. In these moments, you inevitably get to know yourself and others. Later, you learn to deal with it and find that fear and concerns about “embarrassment” and doubts about “whether I’m doing it right” are actually universal among all people, and you stop worrying about it.
• I have learned to inhabit my awareness throughout my body. Not just in the head, but everywhere at once. Many intellectually working people simply feel that they live somewhere behind their eyes, where they have a headquarters and a control panel, and the rest of the body serves to move the head and get food. I can’t do it automatically, but I have to practice for a while.
• I have become more sensitive to myself and notice what harms me. I stopped eating spicy foods, stopped drinking coffee, stopped consuming sweet beverages. Gradually, I am reducing technology use and mostly using it for work-related matters. Conversely, I have incorporated more movement into my life. Of course, all this can be read on the Internet and started independently of Tai Chi. But to put it understandably, the exercise helped me accept this as my own. To find out that I really want it. To become a person for whom this is a natural step.
• I have learned about myself that I have a lot of unnecessary fears. That I want to manage everything myself and that I do not like being dependent on someone else. I don’t like asking others for help. My own independence is my highest goal.
• I stopped worrying and badmouthing other people. And since then, their intentions, how they are set up, and how they function have become clearer to me. I understand people more than ever before because I understand myself better.
• I am calmer and in stressful situations, I can create more distance for myself.

If you overcome a certain level during exercise (which is very difficult to measure and define, you will recognize it retrospectively) and adopt it, you can easily apply it to other people as well. Today, for example, I recognize weak spots in other people’s posture with the same level of detail as I deal with them in myself. Just a few seconds of walking style in the city, posture, or gestures of various people are enough.

In short, by getting to know myself, I get to know others.

5. The Principle of Non-Striving

I am reaching my limit, which I have not yet mastered, and that is the principle of non-striving. The description is simple, the application much more complicated. Simply put, when we want something very much and put effort into it, it may not succeed. On the contrary. Effort can be harmful because it causes stress, tension. Sometimes it may be much better to let go of a goal or effort towards it, and it will come as if by itself, indirectly, and fall into our lap. A bit differently than we expected.

The best comparison I can think of is like when we try too hard on a date and become wooden and someone we are not. Which is in direct contradiction to why, for example, that person went on a date with us, and the result will not be worth much.

Effort is basically a struggle for something. It automatically causes tension in our body, which is again in direct contradiction with the flow of energy. Something starts to go well during practice, you start to feel something, you add effort, and suddenly everything is gone.

I have been entrepreneuring for 10 years and am learning what it is like not to strive, not to try too hard, and to let things flow and happen as they want.

6. Qi Energy

By removing obstacles, outer layers, and understanding oneself, we get to the point where we start to feel the flow of energy. Then it’s about learning to use energy. Personally, I am still in the theoretical phase. Although I practice with people who have 10-15 years of experience and many of them feel energy.

Our master is on another level, but even he cannot mediate a view of what it is like. 30 times an hour he says, “Look,” but a person is blind to it with ordinary vision. Occasionally, some realization comes, but only one on the way to complete understanding.

During exercise, I regularly feel warm hands and perhaps after 20 minutes a certain comfortable state.

In some sessions, I feel that some movements are very pleasant, especially in the area of the hands and forearms. My palms tingle and are hot, and the meditative state deepens.

A few times, I have had peculiar inner experiences from practicing in pairs, especially with women (who handle Tai Chi more intuitively, men are more technical). But that came later. A beginner has enough to do with coordinating movements and relaxation and doesn’t worry about energy.

7. Persistence

If you have read this far, you may be wondering why to practice Tai Chi, when noticeable progress comes only after many years. And the truth is that the fluctuation of beginners is huge, because 50% drop out in the first year. Many advanced practitioners disappear for a year or two, only to return and start practicing regularly again when their health and mental state deteriorate. Any progress is not free and is dearly bought with patience and you never have the certainty that you will feel something or be good at it. Moreover, when you put in more effort, it will be counterproductive.

Occasionally on that journey, you discover something, some gift – but you never know what it will be or when it will come.

For me, the answer is simple. It’s actually quite an interesting game. “It’s interesting to discover it.” It’s something that can be experienced firsthand and which cannot be well understood by the head and analytical thinking. It’s something that sensitizes a person and defies logical laws. And it’s something that you can’t explain well to others.

When you practice a piece of the sequence, you are unlikely to impress others as when you split bricks with your hand. Tai Chi is done for oneself, but even the smallest progress remains.

Lukas