Tai chi health and happiness airs next. Hello, welcome. Welcome. Its so nice to have you here. You know, some folks who are here today have done a lot of tai chi, and some folks have no experience at all just like the people who are watching in the Television Viewing audience. Some of you have had some tai chi experience and some not at all. So, youre all welcome. And i want to say that im really honored to be here on Public Television. You know, people have been asking me for years, isnt tai chi very difficult . Isnt tai chi something you have to study for years before you can show it off in public . But i tell people, if you can wave your hands you can do tai chi, right . Lets prove it. Lets take your left hand and just wave. Just wave, hey, hello, how are you . So, let me tell you right off the top that what im doing while im instructing you is mirroring you. If i say right, you go right. If i say left, you go left. It doesnt matter what im doing. Across, and up and right to left. Now, lets get the other hand involved and the right hand scoops under and across left to right, and down, and scoop. Lets get both hands going across, and circle. Oh, thats awesome. Look at that. Beautiful. One more time, across, lets come back to the middle, and float down. Thats wonderful, wonderful. What you have just done is a movement from tai chi called waving hands like clouds. Im so excited to share with you in this program something that ive done for the last 35 years of my life, all right. Its called tai chi and tai chi is something for everyone. You dont need to be a certain age. You dont need to be a certain fitness level. You dont need to be a certain religion or philosophy, because its a practice that combines everything that everyone needs, right physical exercise, philosophy guidelines for life, ancient wisdom, but its also practical. The principles of tai chi you know informed by the movements that i was just doing, can transform your life, transform your health transform everything that happens to you. To kind of get us started, i thought i would tell you a little bit about where tai chi comes from, whats the origin of tai chi. And to do this, we have to cast our minds back almost 2,000 years to a time in ancient china when there was a terrible flood. The waters of the yellow river overflowed their banks wiping out whole villages and sending people into the countryside. And after the floodwaters receded, plague arose, such a terrible plague that the emperor himself decided to take his personal physician and send him out into the countryside to find out what made people so sick. The physician came back and he told the emperor, ive discovered an amazing thing. He said, ive discovered that people are like water. When theyre moving, when theyre flowing, its healthy. But when they stop moving and become stagnant, pestilence arises. And the emperors physician a man named hua tuo, said, well, i discovered Something Else the people are getting sick, but none of the animals are getting sick. The animals are still healthy. And you know what im going to do . Im going to go back out into the countryside and teach people how to move like the animals. And that way theyll never get stagnant theyll never get sick. This is one of the oldest forms of tai chirelated practice called the frolic of the five animals, all right and the five animals are the animals that he found in the forest. Theres the tiger. Do this with me. So, yes, the tiger with his claws up and the big tigers mouth there, the tiger that pounces. Theres the deer, got to stick the deers horns out there who twists and turns and gallops forward. Yes, theres the bear, the bear who kind of lumbers along, hes very loose in the shoulders and hes kind of, you know waddles back and forth, theres the bear. All right, the monkey, the monkey, whos very quick right, grabs Little Things and hes always on the lookout for something that he might steal, right, is the monkey. And finally, the bird, the crane with his big wings rising up in the air and floating on the wind, yes. See, these movements that youre doing right now, this is the origin of what we turn into tai chi. Hua tuo made an amazing discovery but the consequences of his discovery went far beyond health and fitness, and it became not just about medical practice or, you know, something that will make you feel better but something that would actually be an approach for your entire life, having an abundance of good health having a sense of clarity of mind and creativity of great relationships you know. If youve ever felt like youd like to have it all, let me suggest to you that what you are really looking for is something very simple. Balance. Think about this. When your life is in balance everything works. And when your life is out of balance, everything begins to break down. Balance is the combination of three basic experiences three dynamic experiences that we call freedom flow and power. And i can assure you that the best thing about tai chi, the best thing about this concept of balance is that you already have all three of them, inside you already is all the freedom that youll ever need, the power to make things happen and the flow that youre looking for in your life. All you need is a system for understanding what you already have and how to use it. Im a teacher of that system called tai chi. So in our time together, im going to teach you how to find your balance how to stay in balance as much as possible, and how to regain your balance just in case you happen to lose it. You dont need a special room or a special piece of machinery or magic shoes or a potion or Something Like that. You already have everything that you need to do tai chi. So lets kind of do a little tai chi exercise while were doing this all right. I want to have you all scoot forward in your chairs for just a moment. This is sort of the first lesson of tai chi. If youre at home watching move forward on your chair so that you can tuck the tailbone under a little bit, right, and float the head up. In the ancient writings about tai chi we talk about posture, using the word pearl. They say the spine is suspended from above, like a string of pearls, so heres your head, floating up like the top pearl and heres the rest of your spine floating down. Tailbone tucks under the head floats up and in the middle the spine stretches out, becoming longer and straighter and more comfortable. You know, a question that people ask me all the time how does tai chi give you all these great benefits . So i want to answer this from the chinese perspective by talking about a word we call chi, the life force the spirit breath. And when youre in good posture when youre moving through space in a certain way your chi, your life energy moves in a balanced and harmonious fashion. Thats one of the sources of the benefits that you get out of tai chi. Another way of looking at this might be from the western perspective, and saying, you know that as much as we might want to stay in balance and be in balance, the fact is that most of us develop great imbalances in life, and heres why. We have a habit of always moving away from what hurts, right, and moving towards whats more comfortable. We move away from the weaker sides of ourselves and towards the sides that are stronger. So we wind up with these weird postures and odd sort of angles of our body. This is what we technically call a compensation pattern. Im compensating for what hurts or whats weak, right. But heres the thing. Compensation patterns, by definition, lead to advanced wear and tear. They actually age you faster. So, tai chi corrects those imbalances bring you back out of those compensation patterns, and literally turns back the aging clock. So, from a western perspective this is another source of the benefits of tai chi. So, lets review really quickly what leads to balance, these three experiences freedom, flow and power. And throughout the show today, im going to continue to talk about them and reframe our conversation and our experience together. Lets start with the first one the idea of freedom. And just to kind of give you a sense of what that means when my mother was 70, for her 70th birthday, she decided to go skydiving. [audience chuckles] yeah, thats the reaction i had. When i tell people about my mother, i get a lot of interesting reactions. I get people who say you know oh, i would never go sky jump out of a plane, are you kidding, i could never do that you know or i shouldnt do that. You know, this is what we, you hear that, shouldnt, cant, wont, mustnt, have to, always, never . Its what we call the language of constraint. Its a narrowing down, a limitation of our lives. Its what i call i cant. Thats the opposite of freedom. Freedom is i can. I cant is out of balance. I can is moving towards balance, where everything is possible. The traditional way of talking about tai chi is i say i am playing tai chi. So, thats what were going to do today, right were going to play, youre going to play with us at home. And in fact, i think we should just get into some motion here to feel what it feels like to be playing tai chi. Let the hands be relaxed by your sides, as you are scooting forward on your chair and getting the tailbone tucked under, getting the head to float up here. And then let the hands float up in front, nice and easy. Oh, yes, and then float down again. Imagineim going to give you a little thought exercise here. Imagine that youre sitting in a hot tub. And the hands are floating on the surface of the water, so the water flows in, the hands begin to float, and they float a little higher and a little higher, and when the water reaches about chest high it shuts off and then you settle down into your chair and you say, aahh. That was good. See, that is the way tai chi is supposed to feel, like youre not even moving like something is moving or flowing you, all right, just flowing and floating. Together, the hands by your sides and float up, and down. Ah, you can say aahh if you want to, yeah and float back up again. And now i want you to round your arms out like youre hugging a big tree and open side to side. Now were going to round out our arms like were holding a ball, a big beach ball against our chest, with the right hand on top. The other right hand. There we go. And open side to side, and now left hand on top. So we have open and right hand on top a kind of a closing or a gathering and an open and come back to hugging the tree. And now we have a floating down, aahh. And a floating up, so we have up, down, open, close, hug the tree, open, back to hugging the tree and down. Doesnt that feel nice, right . Well, so this is what most people relate to tai chi as these movements that kind of, what, flow which is the second principle second element of balance, of harmony, is a sense of flow. Today what i want to do is share with you four simple tai chi flows, or tai chi movements. Okay, so im going to break down these movements for you, and i want you to follow along with us at home. And in fact, i want you to do it in your chair. Theres a lot of students that i work with all the time who are not ready to stand up and do the footwork, which were going to add a little bit later in the program but they start out in the chair or maybe they even continue in the chair so you can continue in the chair yourself. So, just be in your chair. Scoot forward. Lets go back to standing on the edge of the chair with your head top floating up, right. And as we do these movements im also going to give you some basic rules some guidelines to follow as youre, you know, doing the movements together. And heres rule number 1 flow rule number 1 smile, slow down and breathe. Aahh. Right, smile, slow down and breathe. Very nice. Okay hands relaxed by your sides. The First Movement is called opening the door, right. The commencement of the movements, the hands float up in front of the body, not too high just about chest high, then elbows heavy, everything floats down. Just like we did before, this is the First Movement opening the door. Lets float back up again. So, thats simple enough so i think im just going to tack on the next movement, which is actually the last movement of the whole sequence. Circle your arms around crossing the wrists at the bottom and float up, now pause and just aahh, let it go float down. Perfect. Thats actually the last movement of the whole sequence, which we call closing the door, right. So were halfway done already. Weve got the opening and weve got the closing. Lets try it one more time. So, smile, relax, breathe opening the door, the hands float up. And float down. Good. Let them float back up again and round them out like youre hugging a big tree. Open side to side, and were going to put the right hand on top of the big round ball. The next movement, Movement Number 2, actually, is called grasping the birds tail, grasp the birds tail and it actually has four small pieces. Piece number one is called ward off, like keep away. Were going to open towards the left, open towards the left and the right hand is going to press down towards your hip. So this is my keepaway arm this is my keepaway my wardoff arm here. Right . Thats piece number one. Now part number two is called roll back, and what i want you to do is to let the right hand drift forward until the two hands are sort of facing each other palm over palm, right almost like im going to make a little tai chi sandwich. Pull both hands down. Turn the waist and toss the hands towards me. Beautiful. Thats the second piece, roll back. Now the right arm is the long arm here and what i want you to do is to bend the elbow folding it in, and bringing the hands palm to palm. This is the start of piece number three which is called press. So im going back over here to my left side, pressing my hands forward. Beautiful. Let the hands slide apart draw them in, down and push forward. This is piece number four, which we call push. And that whole combination is called grasping the birds tail. That was very nice. That was terrific. That was terrific. Were halfway done. Lets pick up the other half, all right, so lets go back to hands by your sides. Youre doing well in your chair. Scoot forward a little bit. You can relax anytime by the way. Im telling you to scoot forward but if you feel like you want to sit back and relax, go for it. Sit up nice and tall the head floats up. Now ive given you flow rule number one which is smile slow down and breathe. Heres rule number 2. We call it conserve the curve and it has to do with what youre already doing with your spine. Theres this natural curve in your spine here thats supposed to be there but in tai chi we kind of minimize it a little bit, right, like the string of pearls. Your head floats up. Your tailbone drops down. And in the middle the curve is conserved, right . Thats flow rule number two. Hands by your sides. Let the hands float up in front, opening the door and float down, aahh. Very nice. Hands float back up again, rounding out to hug the big tree open, now we get the right hand on top, and were going to open towards the left. Ward off. Very nice. Lets let the right hand float forward, and pull both hands down toss them towards the television. The long arm now folds in, placing palm against palm. Im looking to the left again as i press. Slide the hands apart, draw them in and then forward to push. Beautiful, very nice. Now stay with me, because what were going to do is open and then left hand on top. Were going to do the same move grasping the birds tail to the right side. Were going to open to the right. Remember, left hand pushes down by the hip here. Float the left hand forward, palms facing each other palm over palm. Pull down and toss them towards the television. A long arm, which is now the left arm folds in, palm against palm. Press forward towards the right side, beautiful, slide the hands apart, withdraw, and push. Nice. Come back to the center and scoop the hands down crossing at the wrists. They float and pause, and aahh. Floating down, closing the door. That was nice. That was beautiful. That was beautiful. This is what we call tai chi forms, tai chi flows. We practice the forms to practice mastering the sense of flow, the element of flow, which is a part of balance and harmony. But we say that whats important about flow whats important about tai chi forms is that it doesnt stop giving you benefits when you walk out of the classroom. I believe that you can keep the benefits going in the rest of your life. Tai chi really has significant benefits to every part of your life. The mayo clinic, for example has found that people who practice tai chi do things like reduce their anxiety and depression they improve their balance and stability and muscle strength. It improves the quality of your sleep lowers your blood pressure, improves your cardiovascular fitness. It can relieve chronic pain. Anybody with chronic pain . Tai chi can relieve that. It increases your energy your endurance and agility your overall feelings of well being. Tai chi reduces falls in older adults, well, in everybody, really. I tell you, dr. Vijay vad who is a renowned Sports Medicine specialist at the hospital for special surgery in new york city said that preliminary evidence shows that doing tai chi once a week can increase balance and reduce the risk of falls and hip fractures among seniors by up to half. This bears repeating. The greatest beauty of tai chi is that all the things you need for that kind of balance, freedom, flow, power is already in you. You already have everything you need. Theres so much i want to share with you, right in this exploration of tai chi in the rest of this program. The next thing that were going to talk about is how to actually get in touch a real physical sensation of that energy weve been talking about in an exercise i call touching the chi, touching the chi. So were going to come back and do that in just a minute. Lyn hello, im lyn may. Thank you for joining us for tai chi, health and happiness with daviddorian ross. Daviddorian is here in the studio with me, and right now were going to take a short break to talk with him about tai chi balance and about this pbs station. Before we do that, please take a look at this. Announcer contribute 65 to support this pbs station and well say thanks with the companion dvd to the program youre watching, which includes 40 minutes of Additional Information and exercises. When you call with a 100 contribution, well send you the companion dvd and daviddorians new home practice dvd, 9 flows. Progress from what youve learned today with more tai chi moves. For your generous contribution of 175, youll receive the companion dvd, the 9 flows dvd, plus the unique tai chi beginners kit. Open the box to find a specially designed tai chi exercise ball, a dvd with a program to guide your use of the ball, and a Second Program with even more tai chi exercises. Theres also a collection of essays to deepen your understanding of the philosophy of tai chi. Call or make a contribution online, and thanks. Lyn this is an absolutely wonderful program. We are so fortunate to have it as part of the pbs schedule. Tell me why you chose pbs. Daviddorian well, pbs is a place where peo