Nurturing Your Qi

Think of your Tai Chi practice as neither a sprint nor a marathon.

In a sprint, you drain your energy in a burst. In a marathon, you drain it at a measured pace over a much longer period of time. But in both cases, you cross the finish line depleted.  When you finish practicing Tai Chi, you should feel refreshed and energized, not drained.

This is especially important as you get older and have less of the raw vitality of youth. Tai Chi can slow the clock but not stop it. You can continue to progress at Tai Chi as you age, whether that means turning 30 or turning 80, but you must train smarter and more efficiently with each passing year.

You must learn to gather and nurture your energy rather than squander it. If you try to deny the passage of time and pretend to be 20 at 60, you will end up with a net loss of energy and probably an injury. 

How to train smarter and more efficiently is a big topic, but here’s a good a starting point: Be steady. If you decide to allocate 7 hours per week for Tai Chi, practice one hour per day rather than all day on Sundays or 3.5 hours a day on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Daily practice is valuable because the primary focus of Tai Chi is on training the mind and energy. The mind is like a wild, bucking horse that is best calmed with daily practice. And moving energy through the body requires dredging clogged channels as well as creating new ones. This too requires daily persistence and patience, or the small gains made one day will be surrendered the next.

All students dream of dramatic breakthroughs and epiphanies, and these may come. But they typically arrive only after long periods of practice, which itself becomes a deepening pleasure over time.