What I Still Practice After Decades of Tai Chi and Qigong
For many years, one of the ways I measured my Tai Chi and Qigong practice was by how much it contained.
I learned new forms and exercises. I studied different styles. I practiced material from different teachers and tried to keep much of it available.
At one point, I counted roughly fifty different styles and systems that I had learned or practiced in some form.
That number matters less to me now than what happened afterward.
I stopped trying to keep most of it.
There was no single decision to give everything up. Some things simply faded because I stopped practicing them. Other things I consciously decided I no longer needed.
A few remained.
These days, I usually practice Tai Chi and Qigong three times a week, but they are often part of a larger exercise routine rather than the center of it.
Before I lift weights, I spend about ten minutes doing Qigong. I use a few familiar practices such as Constant Bear, Reverse Bear, and Eight Brocades. Sometimes, though, I'll substitute other forms or exercises.
Then I do a simple strength routine using dumbbells.
When I finish lifting, I usually practice the first section of a Tai Chi form. Sometimes I continue through the whole form.
And occasionally, apart from the exercise routine, I practice Tai Chi or Qigong simply because I feel like doing it.
That is most of my regular practice now.
It is very different from the practice I had when I was younger.
I once practiced for hours. I wanted to learn more. I wanted to understand more. I spent a great deal of time trying to improve what I already knew while continuing to add new things.
For a long time, that was enjoyable.
I am not sorry I did it.
But I no longer feel any responsibility to preserve everything I learned.
That has been an important change.
When you have spent years learning something, it can be surprisingly difficult to let part of it go.
The time you invested can make a form seem important even when you no longer enjoy practicing it.
Something a respected teacher gave you can feel as though it ought to remain part of your practice forever.
And if you worked hard to learn something, forgetting it can feel like losing something you earned.
I used to feel more of that.
Now I am much more comfortable allowing a practice to become part of my past.
I don't need every form I once knew to remain available to me.
I don't need to remember every exercise.
And I don't need to keep practicing something simply because I once cared enough to learn it.
What I keep now tends to be much simpler.
I keep things that fit comfortably into my life.
I keep things that seem useful for the person I am now.
I keep things I enjoy.
And I enjoy them more because they no longer have to carry so much weight. I don't have to become better at them every week. I don't have to keep expanding them. I don't have to turn them into a project.
They are simply things that still have a place in my life.
There is something reassuring about discovering what remains after you stop trying to keep everything.
Sometimes what remains is not what you would have predicted years earlier.
A favorite form may disappear.
An exercise you once considered basic may stay with you for decades.
Something you once practiced seriously may become a ten-minute warm-up.
And something you stopped doing entirely may return later in a different form.
That is happening with walking for me now.
Years ago, I regularly walked and hiked for miles. Then walking gradually disappeared from my routine.
Recently I started again.
Not with the distances I once covered, but with short walks that fit where I am now.
I don't know exactly what that practice will become.
I don't need to know yet.
That may be one of the biggest differences between the way I practiced when I was younger and the way I practice now.
I used to be much more interested in what a practice could become.
Now I am often more interested in whether it still belongs in my life.
Some things do.
Some things don't.
And a surprisingly small number of practices can be enough.