[Closed] Tai chi, anyone?

I tried a few years back, it may well help you with anxiety, tbh I didn’t find it helped but I was more set on yoga.

See if they do a free class, to learn the whole routine it will take the best part of twelve months

Yes, I did it for three years then the instructor left the group and no one took it over.

I really enjoyed it. There’s more to it than wiggling your arms about a bit.

Make sure that, as soon as you arrive at your first class, that you declare yourself to be the immortal Iron Fist.

If no one believes you, throw a childish strop to rebalance your chi.

Yes please

I did it for a couple of years when I was doing Kung Fu - v enjoyable and mindful. The movements in Kung Fu were hard, but the Tai Chi movement was harder still - you could do it decent enough but when you saw how the Chinese instructor performed it was just a different level of movement. Made you feel like a hairy-arsed bloke trying to ballet dance.

It varies heavily by instructor. Bit like yoga so difficult to say whether it would work or not.

If you lucked into one of the traditional martial arts variants of it I doubt it would be that relaxing (although would take a long time to get any good).

So give it a go but be prepared to walk away.

So give it a go but be prepared to walk away.

....really slowly and deliberately

I did it for about 6 months. Found it interesting & enjoyable but it never really "clicked". There was a lot of woo involved, dunno if you have to BELIEVE for it to work 😀 It was also pretty difficult to do properly (even though in theory it should be quite simple!)

Then I tried yoga (similar, but different!) and that did click pretty much straight away, so I still do that. IMO everyone can benefit from mindful things like this, whatever they are.

….really slowly and deliberately

In your pyjamas

Go and have a go, give at least a few lessons unless you hate it from the start. If you like it, keep going, if you don't find something else, maybe Yoga.

As above depends a lot on the instructor. I went to a class in Oxford years ago, more of the martial art style which is the rarer option, a good warm up and work out, set forms, some sparring and then meditation. Unfortunately I moved away, I would liked to have continued.

+1 for it being variable. Originally I did Wu Cheng (wutan) style for rehabilitation of my knackered leg, which is a more physical/practical style. Also, the instructor was a brilliant wee nugget that wouldn't have been out of place in Barlinnie. So it was all pretty different from the standard tai chi cliche. Every session we'd get at least one example of Bus Stop Tai Chi, which would be like "how to use your brush knee/twist step to push someone off balance then break their nose" Oh, and absolutely no Mystical Bullshit. I did find it very soothing but just in the same way as any other non-frantic exercise.

I did about 3 sessions with some other dude and he was all about the Mystical Bullshit, drove me up the wall, I ended up walking out after he decided to spend 10 minutes telling us how to breathe. "It's for relaxation!". "Do I look ****in relaxed to you?"

More recently I decided to try and get back into it and ended up in a bit of an old ladies' Yang style group, which was really pleasant in its own way but didn't appeal to me the same. I remember the instructor asked me to go through the forms in wu cheng style for the class then said "Right group, hands up anyone that finally believes it's a martial art" 🙂

Don't do it any more- I still do some of the forms just casually but a lot of it's just gone to rust. Once I recovered enough to ride again that took over the time. Kind of wish I'd kept it up

I do yoga and it is brutal, Tai Chi looks tame, but i'm sure it would surprise me because i always thought yoga was tame.

I did a term or 2 of it 25 years ago and expect it would help with mindfulness etc. I found d it a bit dull but I was young.

A mate still teaches and is I think Treasurer of Taoist version

Did it for a short while some years back, but the class finished fairly abruptly, possibly to do with the leasure centre it was held at. Shame, I enjoyed it, it was more biased towards the martial side rather than the mystical; I always looked at it as slowed-down kata, which makes it trickier to do, what with keeping one’s balance n’all. We did sword forms as well, with lovely wood replicas of Chinese fighting swords, one of which I’ve still got, ‘cos I brought it home to practice with, I’d like to take it up again, but the only class that seems to be running anywhere near is on at 10.30 in the morning, which is a fat lot of good to someone who actually has a job!

Mrs Slow did Tai Chi for a while and I eventually went along but the class closed shortly afterwards (nowt to do with me, honest). She enjoyed it very much and it struck me as a useful tool, though more the physical aspect than mental.