Improve Your Balance & Coordination with These Tai Chi Movements

Hi, I'm Sonny. Today we're going to work on our balance. Balance relies on the coordination between your muscles, joints, vision, and inner ear, the vestibular system. As we age or become more sedentary, these systems become less responsive, which increases the risk of falls and reduces movement efficiency. Tai Chi has been shown to improve balance by training proprioception, weight shifting, and neuromuscular control through slow, controlled movement. Throughout today's session, we'll focus on four key components of balance. Each plays a critical role, and for each component, we'll work through specific exercises designed to progressively develop these systems. All right, find a comfortable space and let's begin the practice. Before we continue, I'd like to invite you to a seven-day Tai Chi and Qigong challenge. We offer a free trial where you can explore a wide range of thoughtfully structured Tai Chi and Qigong courses and experience the practice at your own pace. Check out the link below whenever you're ready. Now let's get back to the topic. Let's talk about Tai Chi and balance. I've been teaching Tai Chi now for maybe about 10, 12 years, and throughout that time, I've had a lot of people come in because their doctor or a physical therapist or a trainer recommended Tai Chi for balance. It is a widely known consensus that Tai Chi is good for balance, but it also sort of begs the question, what is balance? What does it mean to have good balance? It started to get us in our classes to look at balance a little bit more intentionally. Where in our practice are we working on balance? Where are we improving it? Where are we going to get more energy out of it? Feel those benefits getting more maximized within our own practice. So let's get after it. We're going to do four different types of exercises today that are going to highlight each of those areas. Whether you are new to these practices, it's going to be accessible, or if you're familiar with these practices already, it's going to let you look at this from a different perspective, from that perspective of just balance. How are we working to balance our movement to create that stability and control and groundedness in our practice? Most people's center of gravity is a little too far forward, a little too high up, and so the process of moving from center in Tai Chi is one of not just intention, but mechanics and practice over time that gets you orienting through your movement from your waist. It relaxes the waist, relaxes the lumbar area, gets your hips and your pelvis and you're moving more coordinated. And that takes a little bit of time, takes a little bit of practice. And so that moves from center, gets your center of gravity in a better spot, and gets qualities from Tai Chi like Zhong Ding, Song Zheng, which is that central equilibrium. Starting to wake up and starting to work a little bit more in harmony with your whole body movement. So the first movements we're going to do are movements to work our center. So create a nice relaxed position. We're just going to do a few grounding breaths in through the nose, out through the nose or mouth. And the movements that we're doing right now, the goal is to get us moving from center as center, clarifying. Let's do one more circle. Upper body and lower body. So bring your hands right to center. And all we're going to do right now is just swirl the waist. So just a little swirling of the waist from side to side. Notice when you go towards your heels, when you're going towards the ball of your foot and your toes, when you feel more pressure towards the right, more pressure towards the left. And work to keep the foot even and flat on the ground. If the foot is rolling from side to side, then you're not going to be getting the correct input from the ground up to center. And so try to keep the foot flat, move from your waist, feeling your hips working, creating that clarity of upper body and lower body. Now switch together or switch the direction. Another thing to look at is the dual action of the legs. So you can feel both hips working, both legs working, and the single action of the waist. So the waist is just swirling. So this gives us clarity of our separation between upper body and lower body, as well as down where our hips are down the chain. And coming back to center. Remember, it's not about perfect movement at all. It's just about feeling the body loosen up. So moving from center as center, we want to manage movement from our waist. The waist is the general, okay? It directs our movement. So from here, our next one we're going to do is we're going to work at simple turning and circling from our yow, our waist. So we shift and create that natural tuck where you feel a more fullness to one side. And you're going to lower down a little sink, shift that under the ground into that natural tuck, rise up and shift. And then don't lower, shift it at the top and back down. And then up and shift. So feel the change of empty full from one side to the other. So you feel one leg more full relative to the other. Then you switch it and then switch the direction that you're going. This is building that concept of moving from center as center. The coordination might be challenging in the beginning and that's okay. Now we're going to switch the movement at the bottom. So I'm still at the, towards the bottom of my stance. I got the curves in my legs and now I'm going to change empty full. Circle it up over the top, lower it down, change empty full again, and change it direction. So I'm changing empty full each time. Empty, full, empty, full. And then I change directions and feel this happening from the motion of the body directed from the And let's do one more on each side and back to center. After that, mechanics. How are we creating our shapes? How are we transferring our weight? How are we turning directions and lifting our foot and moving our arms around and doing all these things, right? This is sort of the coordination that we build through Tai Chi practice. When we're doing all these movements in Tai Chi, we're building mechanics, whether it's upper body mechanics or lower body mechanics that's building that coordination. And the more coordinating we have, the more challenges that we can work on in that controlled environment, the more our mechanics are going to get better, the more we're going to feel that coordination and balance will improve. So now we're going to go through three different movements to create some basic coordination in the body that's great for balance. And so the first one is just simply raising hands, the opening move of the form. So for this version, we're going to lift our arms out with the thumbs, like you're doing a thumbs up, okay? Then allowing them to relax and you're going to draw them back towards your pockets and then lift your tiger's mouth. This is the tiger's mouth right there, the squeezing part of your hand. And then gently pull them back and down towards your back pockets or towards your pockets, front pockets and back pockets. So what we want to feel is the relationship coming up from the ground to the hips to the shoulders, then the arms are lifting. So you feel the shoulders working with the arms. Now we don't want to shrug our shoulders as the arms lift. We want to feel the shoulders down in their sockets being lifted by the legs connected to the hips. This really gets our center of gravity working more vertically up the body, sitting it down more firmly into our center. So find this connection between the hands and the feet, elbows and knees, shoulders and hips. Sitting down evenly into your stance. Let's do a couple more. Now those qualities that we talked about are present in all of the movements of Tai Chi, but there are certain movements in certain areas of our practice that are going to be just a little bit better suited for highlighting things. Like these movements are great for coordination, but we also still need to be mindful and move from center. So our next movement is standing on one leg. Our golden rooster stands on one leg. So we want to shift across, find that connection to the empty full on one leg, tuck in and now you're going to stand up and lift the leg. Now it's not about how high you lift it. Lift it like you were going to step onto something. So a step could be just right there. So lift the foot up as if you were going to step onto something and then lower it in control, finding your root, shift, notice, center, change empty full and collect, lighten and lift. Stand up from the other leg. So don't try to lift your body from the leg. That isn't connected to the ground. Stand up from the base leg and lift, find center, change empty full. So for work it, if you're having any trouble there, so there's all levels and it's okay. Here you can see I have my toe on the ground and I've lifted my heel, but I still can feel empty full and I still feel that connection and that's going to help you bridge the gap with your mechanics over time if you're having trouble and then you can just slowly stand it up from the base leg. There is the important part. It's the base leg standing up, pressing that into the ground that creates the stability. So as you move over, feel your grounding side pressing down to create lift. Take your time transferring empty full, have it be lighter and stand it up off the ground and let's do one more and back down. Grounding circle, one more movement. So step your feet just a little wider. Now this movement is reaching east and west and sitting. Feel your your bottom looking for the seat of a chair and from here cross the arms, lift them up, open. So your bottom looks for the seat of a chair, arms scoop and feel your arms pull into your waist, into your ribs, into your chest, open. So it's like you're picking something up, pulling it into your waist, pulling it up your body while the hips and your bottom are down and back searching for a chair. This is going to build lowering coordination in the body and the rising coordination in the body. So we feel that lift come up naturally through center and two more. Another one that is maybe a little bit more of fine-tuning of movements is leg stabilization. Strength in the leg stabilizers. Now one of the natures of Tai Chi and Qigong is that we work from walking and standing and when we walk and stand we're in more stillness and we have to do things like squeeze and press out and draw in. These are sort of stabilizing movements that are related to how we move and how we are still. This is different than let's say like the propulsion movements. If we were running and we're propelling our body forward, those are going to be more dominant in a certain area versus when we're here in one spot stabilizing in. And so whether we're standing or moving slowly, those stabilizer muscles are very important. Think of riding a bike. Is it easier to ride a bike really slow or at a moderate speed? Riding a bike slow is challenging. You get on it, you're wobbling until you get up to a speed because of those stabilization muscles, right? And so this is an aspect of our balance. By slowing down and working on our movement and things like ocean stepping and Tai Chi walking, then you're going to be increasing the stabilizing muscles of the legs, your adductors, your abductors, the muscles in the lower leg and your feet, etc. Really bringing a lot of strength from the ground up, creating your root. Now we want to get our body moving too because we're not just looking for balance in stillness, we're looking for it in motion. So ocean stepping is great for this and we don't need to worry about stances or any techniques or anything like that for this ocean stepping because we just want to feel the stabilizing muscles of the legs working. So this is going to happen in the action as we open the foot. So feel the foot open and then as you shift, imagine your feet spreading apart, okay? Your feet spread apart and then you're going to close the feet and the legs together, okay? Open, just place it out, feel the feet sort of spread apart, come together, open, they're spreading apart and they close together. The hands could be here on your center, spread the ground, pedal the feet, spread the ground, close the legs. And just even a few mindful steps doesn't have, you don't have to go for a long distance, it's not about going for a walk with this, it's about feeling the open and close, okay? The pulling apart from the ground, the stabilizer muscles of the legs. So whatever position you're in here, empty, full, I'm sorry, full, empty, you feel stable. You shift forward, you feel stable. You shift back, you feel stable. Forward. In all these positions, you're learning to find an easy stability through the action of the legs opening and closing. And like we said earlier, one of our aspects of balance is our center of gravity, maybe being a little too far forward. So with our ocean stepping, you can see where it's almost the analogy, the metaphor is there. We are going forward but not all the way and move back. And we're going forward but we're grounding it, right? We're going forward but not all the way, we go back. So that we get used to controlling our center and moving from center, as well as those other aspects, stabilization, mindfulness, and mechanics. And then the last thing, mindfulness. Paying attention to what you're doing. This is just hard-baked into Tai Chi and practice there in everything that we're doing. And this is a very important thing. I had one student who was dealing with lightheadedness and vertigo. And her complaint, she had said was, every time I stand up quickly, I get lightheaded. Why? You know, what can I do? And my first answer was, stand up slowly and see what happens. Because within that process, we might be moving too fast and moving quickly. We might be losing some mindfulness because your mind is not full of what the body is doing. You're moving a little too quick. So we might be missing places of moving from center. Stabilization and proper mechanics for those movements that is resulting in a stabilized space, right? And so mindfulness is something we want to take into all of those practices. So even if we don't feel like we're fully walked in, we're still mindful of how we're moving. And so by practicing in a microcosm that brings those things to a little bit more of a highlight in our movement, you're going to feel the challenge when we do Tai Chi walking. You're going to feel the challenge when we do Tai Chi movements. You're preparing the body to meet those challenges out in the real world. The last thing that we're going to do for mindfulness is about as classic Tai Chi as you can get. And that is post practice. And you can start with the grounding circle that brings you into post. And post is not just the position of the arms. It is the concept of being in your standing practice. The Zhan Zhuang in Chinese. And when we're here, this is very much mindfulness. Because it's easy to be distracted. It's easy for our mind to wonder. And it is not much else going on besides standing here. So we want to relax and let our mind become full of the experience of the body. Feeling our feet, our legs, the separation between upper body and lower body and connect to our breath. Two of the most fundamental concepts in Tai Chi, Song, Relax, Release, Soften, and Zheng, Full Body Awareness and Alignment. They work together for balance in our shape. So that when we relax, we don't collapse. When we feel our full shape, we don't feel tense. They come together so we can harmonize and relax into our space according to those Tai Chi concepts. And release. Three grounding breaths. All right. Shake it out a little bit. Walk your space. And if you feel like it, maybe check your balance a little bit, right? Lift one foot off. See how it feels. See how you, how balanced you feel on one spot. See if it made a difference in the way you are connecting to your center and that concept of balance. Because remember, balance is not, isn't just about can I stand on one foot. It is about how comfortable you feel in your space, in your movement, and your posture. So thanks a lot for practicing, and we'll see you next time.