Practice Everyday

"If you practice for one day you get one day’s benefit, with daily practice you can steadily improve. If you don’t practice for one day you lose ten days of development.

So practice everyday without stopping! Western students must understand this clearly. Practice everyday!"
~~Chen Zhenglei, 19th generation of the Chen Family.

This is Grandmaster Chen Zhenglei's 2 disk introduction to the New Frame First Form Routine of Chen Style Tai Chi Chuan. This is a good starting point for people who want to study one of the traditional branches of tai chi for one of the most famous and high level masters in china.

Filmed in Chinese but has a resonably good set of English subtitles.

Drink your tea slowly

Drink your tea slowly and reverently,
as if it is the axis
on which the world earth revolves
- slowly, evenly, without
rushing toward the future;
Live the actual moment.
Only this moment is life.
~~Thich Nhat Hanh

edited 6/27/15

A String of Pearls

T'ai Chi Chuan has been compared to a string of pearls. A pearl is formed by an oyster out of a need to deal with an irritating object. For humans, this irritation can have a physical, mental or spiritual basis, maybe all three.

T'ai Chi evolved, like a pearl, to deal with these irritations. A grain of sand is surrounded in defense by the oyster to form a smooth pearl. A threat or need to our individual self is made into a movement of such beauty by the T'ai Chi principles that almost everybody feels a deep sense of awe. These separate moments are strung together to make T'ai Chi Chuan, as practiced by most people today."

From 108 Insights into T'ai Chi Chuan: A String of Pearls, a motivational Pocket Guide for T'ai Chi Chuan. "In Traditional Yang Style T'ai Chi , according to customary counting, there are 108 movements. So," says author and teacher Michael Gilman, "I have decided to use 108 as my String of Pearls."