1. Keep your head and body straight and relax 2. Close your eyes lightly – optional.
3. Tongue touching the upper palate.
Children may skip this.
4. Exhale. Empty the lungs to start off.
5. Normal Abdominal breathing. Inhale and exhale normally and mentally count your breath. The count should match your personal benchmark and make sure that both inhaling count and exhaling count is the same.
For example, you have record a count of 4 for inhaling, you should have a count of 4 for exhaling too. You should reach the maximum expansion at the count of 4, and started the exhaling process, and count to 4 before inhaling again.
Repeat 3-5 times.
6. Slower Abdominal Breathing.
Add one more count. Add one more count onto your current inhaling and exhaling count. For example, if you have a count of 5, add 1 more count means you will now count to 6 instead. Slow down the abdominal expansion and mentally count to your new number. You have to consciously slow down the expansion and inhaling process, as well as the shrinking and exhaling process.
Feel the air. In the process of breathing in slowly, you should focus on your nose. You should feel very small and long flows of air going in and out through your nose.
Repeat 5-10 times.
Go even slower. Repeat No. 6 and add one more count each time until you are comfortable with your maximum current count.
7. Maintain constant count. Continue breathing 20-30 times with the current count. For example, if you have reached a count of 8 for both inhaling and exhaling, then continue breathing 20-30 times with the count of 8. There’s no need to go slower.
If you should feel dizzy or lack of air, revert back to your normal breathing speed. Stop if you must. Start the whole exercise again when you feel alright.
Now, how do you feel? Better than before, isn’t?
So, you have finally mastered the final steps, and that is:
Step 5: Maintain the slow and constant breathing rhythm.
Congratulations! You have mastered the 5 Easy Steps Towards Greater Health and Mental Strength. You can now proceed to the next section for the full practice guide.
Tai Chi Breathing – Step by Step Guide
Congratulation! If you have came this far, you have mastered the exercises designed in all the 5 Steps. Now that you have completed all the prior exercises, you can now start to practice it fully as a complete Tai Chi Breathing Basics so that you can make it a habit eventually.
The full practice guide is a summary of the exercises you have done so far, arranged in a more complete sequence. You can always refer back here, or you can print out the Summary Guide at the end of the book to refer to at anytime.
Once you are used to it, I suggest you put away these reference. You should be able to make it a habit.
Take note however, for normal person, senior citizen, children and pregnant women, please refer to the respective Practice accordingly. For example, if you want let your child practice, be sure he or she has already gone through the previous exercises, and then go to Practice 3, which is specially arranged for children.
The list of practices for the different groups of people is as follows:
Practice 1 – Normal Person Practice 2 – Senior Citizen Practice 3 – Children
Practice 4 – Pregnant Women
But before you go on into the practice, please read through the next heading to understand a little more about Qi.
Maintaining the Qi
In your previous exercises, I did not include the steps involving maintaining the Qi. For the full practice, maintaining Qi is necessary. What is this and why?
Maintaining the Qi involves an additional step where you need to place your hands over the navel and rotate 36 times clockwise, spiraling outward from the center of the circle, and rotate 24 times counter clockwise, spiraling inward from the diameter of the circle.
The spiraling movement is based on the fact that (Indian traditions) your chakra’s rotate clockwise when absorbing the energy and counter-clockwise when discharging negative energy. Dantian is considered as Abdomen Chakra.
By doing so, you will enhance the absorption of the Qi by Dantian and to discharge extra and negative Qi from our body. Better absorption of the Qi means we would be able to maintain the Qi better in our body.
Why 36 times? Why 24 times?
Frankly, Mr. Quah, my Tai Chi instructor could not give me the answer too! So, I don’t know why. It has been passed on from generation to generation. The only reason I can think of is that the clockwise direction is more than the counter clockwise direction because clockwise direction helps absorption and counter clockwise is to discharge the extra. We have to absorb more than discharging in order to increase the amount of Qi in our body.
For children, I did not include this step. It is not necessary for them to do it yet. But if you like to, yes, you can teach them. For pregnant women, I did not include too. You can do so, depending on the stage of pregnancy and whether you can put your hands over the navel comfortably.
So, go to the appropriate practice to proceed.
Practice 1: Tai Chi Breathing Basics – Full Practice for Normal Person