| Interview
The Importance of Practising Every Day for Well Being
by Abbey
I started learning Tai Chi in 1995. At this time I was
off work for some time so I had plenty of time to practise. I enjoyed
it and, because I was practising for at least a half an hour every day,
quickly began to feel the benefits. In less than eight weeks, there
was a noticeable reduction in the chronic neck and shoulder pain and
tension I had suffered for over twenty years. It became easy to
stay aware of relaxing my neck and shoulders while driving, my hands
resting comfortably on the steering wheel with my arms learning to hang
easily off my shoulder joints. I remembered how stiff and sore my neck
and shoulders used to get when I drove for long periods. I began to
wonder just how unaware of my body I must have been before practising
Tai Chi, for that to happen.
Gradually I increased my practice time to about an hour a day and soon
noticed that my balance and coordination were improving. I have been
a keen bushwalker for about 40 years and, after just a few months of
daily Tai Chi practice, I noticed I could walk along narrow logs to
cross rivers, wearing a heavy pack, with ease and with better balance
than I had ever experienced as a young woman. I also found that I
could do heavy work around the garden more easily and with less stress
on my body. When splitting firewood, I found I was wielding the axe
more precisely and with more strength. I used to invariably hurt my
back if I tried to wheel a heavy barrow of rocks. After just a few
months of daily Tai Chi, I just seemed to naturally know how to use my
legs instead of involving my back in pushing the barrow.
At the end of my first year of Tai Chi, I went away to Perth for three
months to support my son and his wife, following the birth of their
second child. I tried to maintain my practice while I was away but as I
had not yet learned to fit it into a busy schedule, I gradually stopped
practising. Although I intended to get back to classes as soon as I got
back, it turned out that I returned to work in a demanding full-time job
and I couldn’t see how I could fit Tai Chi into my schedule. I felt
that there didn’t seem much point in doing Tai Chi classes if I couldn’t
find an hour a day to practise. I was aware
that the benefits I’d
gained were slowly diminishing. A year went by before I worked out
that it would better to do a class or two a week than no Tai Chi at all!
So, after a year’s break, I returned to Tai Chi and, for the next couple
of years, did two or three classes a week plus an hour’s practice once
on the weekend. My Tai Chi did develop a little over that time but the
changes in my body were much less noticeable than during the first year
(when I’d practised every day).
The following year, I took on a nine-month project that meant working
very long hours to meet the project deadline. With this commitment, I
realised that I would not always be able to get to classes and that it
would be easy to let my Tai Chi slip altogether again. So I made up my
mind that during this very busy time I would do some Tai Chi every day,
no matter what, even if it was only 20 minutes. During those nine
months, I worked at least 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week and all
of my work was sitting at my desk writing, reading and working on my
computer. The only Tai Chi I managed to fit in was one class a week,
and my 20 minutes each day was sometimes only 10 minutes. But I did do
a little bit every day and the effect was amazing.
Before I started Tai Chi, the neck and shoulder problems I had been
plagued with were particularly bad if I sat too long or in the wrong
posture at a desk. Using a computer was especially bad for me. Just a
couple of hours at a computer and I’d end up with pain in the whole of
my upper back and neck area. Yet during this period of working
ridiculously long hours, mostly at the computer, I did not experience a
single pang of discomfort in my neck or shoulders. That experience
convinced me that what Brett and Fontane have said to us, over and over
again, about the importance of daily practice, is absolutely true. I am
utterly convinced that the benefit of the small amount of daily practice
during that time far exceeded what I had been getting from the three or
four one hour sessions a week I’d been doing before that. And I should
perhaps add that, because it was such a small amount of time, I
figured that there was not much point practising if I didn’t practise
well. So I also made sure it was quality time, with my mind as
attentive as possible. Even so, I still find it hard to believe
that I got through that period of intense desk work without so much as a
twinge of neck or shoulder pain.
Just in case I wasn’t fully convinced about the value of daily Tai Chi
practice, this year something else happened to teach me some more of
life’s lessons. At the beginning of Term 2, I came down with a virus
that meant I missed classes for two terms. During the years I have been
doing Tai Chi, I had fortunately learned how to take a balanced approach
to practise when I am sick with a cold or flu. (In fact my
occasional bouts of a cold or flu since I started Tai Chi have taught me
a lot about being more balanced in other areas of my life.) My
tendency has been to push myself until I felt so debilitated that I
would collapse into a heap and have no energy for anything. Now I know
to do just a little gentle semi-dynamic Qigong until I feel warm, which
builds energy and helps fight the virus. When suffering from sickness,
we need to listen to the body while we are practising, so that we do not
sap the energy needed for recovery.
So, when I was feeling so dreadfully debilitated by this virus, I asked
Fontane what to practise, and how much. She suggested I try doing
the first Deep Relaxation Fa Soong Gong exercise, Balancing Yin Yang,
each day. This powerful healing exercise balances the qi. She said
to try doing it 100 times, but if that made me too tired, to do just as
much as I had the energy for. So that’s all I did, for nearly two
months. Tai Chi had made me aware enough of my use of energy by now to
recognise how much I could and couldn’t do, to ensure that I didn’t work
against my recovery process. So for two months, if I tried to do any
more than Balancing Yin Yang, I could feel the energy drain from my
body. However, with just twenty minutes of Balancing Yin Yang (100
times), I always felt better, with more energy and less pain.
After a couple of months I started to feel well enough to add another
two or three Fa Soong Gong movements to my simple daily practice
routine. For another month or so, this was as much as I could do but it
still helped to maintain my daily rhythm, and seemed to be helping to
re-build my energy and strength. When I finally felt well enough to
return to Tai Chi classes, I’d missed two whole terms. So I was
expecting class to be really hard for me and that I would have gone
seriously backwards during three months of nothing more strenuous than a
few Fa Soong Gong movements every day. My first week of classes,
however, revealed that I had not regressed as I felt sure I would.
Apart from the fact that I lost a bit of leg strength, my strength,
flexibility and coordination was at much the same level as when I first
got sick! Despite doing Tai Chi for seven years straight now, I
find it amazing that such a small amount of daily practice could be so
beneficial. In terms of value for time spent, Tai Chi really has to
be the most efficient form of exercise there is! So long as it is
practised daily!!
(This is an actual
account, but the name
has
been changed for reasons of
privacy.)
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