A BRIEF HISTORY OF TAI CHI
Tai Chi dates back to the year 1247AD in the Wudang mountains of China. Here, a Taoist monk named Chang San Fen recognised his nation’s need for a martial art that offered the greatest effect with minimum effort, thereby allowing a warrior to fight effectively but not exhaustively.
It is believed his concept developed after witnessing the futile efforts of a crane to catch and kill a snake. While the snake easily managed to avoid each of the crane’s elaborate attacks, the bird soon became exhausted from its efforts. With its opponent weak and vulnerable the snake, having cleverly conserved its energy, was able to strike and kill the bird with ease.
Chang San Fen believed this to be an important lesson of battle and developed the Martial Art form of Tai Chi in response. Today many of the moves and stances reflect its history as a fighting form of martial art.
THE PRINCIPLES OF TAI CHI
Tai Chi is an exercise that relies on the union of both our physical and mental attributes. It is the slow, mindful way in which Tai Chi is performed that brings about this bond and a child of 5 can reap the same rewards as an adult of 50 by taking part in the same exercise.
The basic essence of Tai Chi movement is to be totally in the moment; not thinking about the last move or the next move, but concentrating purely on where you are right there and then.
Despite its gentle nature, Tai Chi is an excellent form of intensive exercise and offers many physical benefits including improvements to balance and suppleness, strength and flexibility. It also provides participants with a great range of emotional and psychological benefits by helping with focus and concentration, calmness and mental fortitude. QIGONG
Qigong (pronounced Chee Gong) is a series of movements designed to cultivate energy in order to improve health and wellbeing.
Qigong exercises relate directly to five different areas of the body and in turn, each organ is partnered by an element and colour.
| Heart |
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Fire |
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Red |
| Lungs |
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Metal |
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White |
| Kidneys |
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Water |
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Black/Dark Blue |
| Liver |
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Wood |
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Green |
| Spleen |
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Earth |
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Yellow |
These relationships develop the principle of Yin and Yang in that to have a well-rounded existence all sides of ourselves must work together in harmony. Yin and Yang offer the basic opposites working in unison to create balance and the five elements operate, in effect, as sub groups of this.
In the Qigong exercises each movement has benefit for internal organ and therefore the part of the body it is related to and when practiced together on a regular basis they can reap great physical reward.
Although calm and simple, the movements are actually very powerful and move blood and energy (chi) throughout all systems of the body helping to prevent disease and promote longevity.
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