The home of our so-called Micro Tai Chi™ Series, a collection of tai chi snippets suitable for spur of the moment exercise when we have a spare minute to kill. We call it MTC for short. Here is a matching YouTube playlist.
The original inspiration? What do I do while waiting sixty seconds for my coffee to reheat in the microwave?
The larger goal? Deal with the problem of keeping up our practice when away from class. Tai chi is no different than any other healthy activity: it does not help if we do not practice, and most of us find it hard. Professor Cheng Man-Ching himself stopped his practice twice after using tai chi to restore his health. And I myself to date have practiced tai chi only while teaching it. As Great Grandmaster Wm CC Chen said, teaching is a good way to keep up our practice.
This is where MCT™ comes in. Rather than ask ourselves to make the heavy lift of setting aside thirty to sixty minutes for practice at home, just give us something worthwhile to practice during a long commercial break, or while the microwave is working. Hopefully this will keep tai chi in mind for us, give us a bit of work, and maybe even draw us into a five or ten minute session.
And now for the individual MCTs:
The Empty Step
Every step in the form should be empty, taken as slowly as all out other movement, and receiving no weight when the foot first alights.
In this particular step, we must also be careful to step straight to the North, to preserve our starting shoulder’s width. During practice, checkyour step afterwards by shifting your weight to the right (back) foot and carefully drawing. your front foot back even with the right. Most folks will find their left foot right next to their right foot because they swung that foot in as a typical step. But this leaves us in a narrow stance towards the opponent, from which we can easily be unrooted.
Another common mistake is to rise up slightly when lifting the left foot. Instead, concentrate on maintaining a steady height. This will require getting the weight fully over the right foot before lifting the left, then supporting your weight one one leg for the full, slow step forward.
Finally, shift the weight to the front leg while warding off with the left and blocking an imagined thigh kick with the right, following the core principle of moving as one.
Open Gate
This MTC is just the first step of Ward Off Left. In the video I tentatively name it Open Gate. “Trap Door” captures the liu posture, but movement names are not usually so explicit.
Cloud Hands
My curret favorite warm up, Cloud Hands. It includes an Empty Step, which my old favorite did not.
Part the Horse’s Mane
From the committee-designed Simplified Taiqiquan, grand flowing fun movement akin to Slant Flyin, Partthe Horses’s Mane.
Golden Pheasant Stands On Left Leg
This MCT can be a substantial workout just reheating the coffee!