Angela Wong's Culinary Adventure
in Healthy Recipes

Just as Tai Chi & Qigong relieve stress from the body,

so can whole foods choices further that relief ...

  

 

Recipe:

 

1 banana

A handful of blueberries

1 big heaping tablespoon of unsweetened coco-powder

1 1/2 cups of unsweetened chocolate almond milk

2 tablespoons of cashew butter

2 handfuls of mixed greens or mixed baby greens

1 cup of ice

 

You may think the greens will not go well with this, but you'd be wrong. This shake won't taste green at all, yet the greens will add to the body to make this shake a rich thick tasting treat, while loading it with anti-oxidents.

 

 

COMING IN 2013: Angela Wong Douglas's culinary life journey, in the form of a cookbook entitled: "My Mother's Garden"

 

In her coming book, Angela will share images of Hong Kong and the world where her recipes come from, along with stories about her mother, Sheng Oi Chan, who taught Angela the art of "food as medicine."

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tai Chi & Qigong TIPS
for Beginners & Teachers

  

WorldTaiChiDay.org's newsletters offer tips that can help people new to tai chi and qigong get it easier and more profoundly, and also these tips are used by teachers worldwide who have found them beneficial to utilize in their own classes. 

 

NOTES FOR NEW TAI CHI & QIGONG STUDENTS:

Getting the most out of tai chi and qigong

When we first come to tai chi class, we often have a preconceived notion of what the teacher's supposed to teach us or the class is supposed to be like. We may have seen someone doing some beautiful, graceful tai chi form or qigong form on the internet or TV, and we want to do what they did because it looks beautiful.

But, when we start the class and the teacher begins teaching us the breathing work, the meditation, the stances, the posture, etc. so that we can have the building blocks to build that beautiful form we saw ... within ourselves we get anxious and urgent. In our minds we may be saying "This isn't what I want, I want to get to the other stuff, the important stuff!"

When you go into that mode, you no longer hear, or enjoy anything the teacher is teaching you. You have brought the urgency of the world into the class with you. Take a breath, and let go. Let go of every one of your 50 trillion cells. Let your mind and heart ungrip and let go of their urgency.

There is no "perfect place" you will get to by hurrying up. What you are asking your teacher to do is to teach you astrophysics without first learning simple math. Its like you're saying to the teacher, "Show me the astrophysics stuff, but skip the number and addition stuff. Just get right to the good stuff."

I'm not pointing fingers at you, because I did this too, I dropped out of tai chi several times, and changed teachers, until finally realizing that my original teacher was great, and it was my own urgency that was causing me to feel unsettled, not her classes.

We live in an age of speed and short attention span entertainment. We give each show about 10 seconds of attention before flipping the channel, and we zoom from class to class, seminar to seminar, book to book, barely skimming the information before moving on.

Tai Chi and Qigong meditation are the opposite of that 'constantly rushed' way of life. When you begin it, it will often make you feel anxious to slow down at first, but when you hang in there, you look back a year or two later and are so glad you did.

Remember to breathe, and to let go of expectations.

I always tell my students to come to class for only 3 reasons:
1) To breathe

2) To loosen up
3) To play

Whatever goals you have for tai chi, improving balance, breathing, immune system, sports performance, well-being, whatever ... just let go of that goal.

There is only one reason to do Tai Chi and Qigong ... because it is FUN to do. It feels goooood to slow down, and to feel the pleasure sensations of the body breathing, loosening, and being massaged by effortless motion.

All the myriad benefits are just gravy. They will come ... just let go of your grip on them ... breathe ... loosen ... have some fun ... and all the benefits will come.

I have classes where people come to have fun, and they keep coming, and their tai chi gets better, their sleep improves, their health improves, their sports performance improves ... and then I have classes where new students come with the idea that I am going to "hurry up and get them to relax and fix all their problems in a one hour class."  Guess what, they don't get fixed in one hour, and they change the channel by rushing off to some other class thinking that will fix them in one hour.

When you go to class, let the teacher's teaching wash over you like a form of entertainment. Lighten up on the class and the teacher, and on yourself. You'll have fun, you'll breathe, and you'll loosen, and months from now you'll look back and be so glad that you lightened up and had some fun as your life continues to expand and change in your tai chi and qigong journey.

 

 

 

Bill Douglas, Founder of World Tai Chi & Qigong Day

Author of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to T'ai Chi & Qigong" (Penguin, New York)

2009 Inductee to the Internal Arts Hall of Fame

 

 

 

 

In the coming 4th edition of Bill's best selling tai chi book, the Appendix A - Tai Chi & Qigong Yellow Pages will offer a global directory of Tai Chi & Qigong teachers and schools. If you or your teacher have not listed your classes in the WorldTaiChiDay.org events/classes directory, do so now, so that readers of Bill's globally published book can find you.

 

Tai Chi & Qigong
TIPS for Teachers

  

WorldTaiChiDay.org's newsletters offer tips that can help make tai chi and qigong teacher's challenges easier, these tips are used by teachers worldwide who have found them beneficia. 

 

TEACHERS, TAKE THE WEIGHT OF CLASSES OFF YOUR SHOULDERS:

A Tip for Preparing for Classes

As teachers, we can collect alot of psychic debris in classes and between them as well. Tai Chi and Qigong put people through alot of challenges. A wise teacher once told me, "Be careful, because students can sometimes get the words teacher and target confused."

It took me a few years of teaching to comprehend what that meant.

When people in classes get frustrated because Tai Chi shows them their balance challenges, or meditation shows them the spinning monkey mind most people walk around with, it can sometimes be vented towards the practice of Tai Chi or Qigong, or to the point of this article, at the teacher (you).

It can be very helpful to maintain a regular meditation practice in addition to your forms, in order to unload such psychic debris. Following is a Nei Gong Meditation that can help you unload this on a regular basis.

Stress Relief Relaxation Calming Sitting Qigong Meditation

You'll notice in this meditation that there are 3 intro parts: After lighting your field, you are then lighting your knowing awareness, sensory awareness, and emotional awareness. This begins the process of letting go of your grip on old issues you've collected in your energy field of consciousness. By donig this regularly you can let go of what you collect in classes.

Then before you go into each class, spend a few minutes in your car opening up to your field of lighted energy that you are, and think of a magnetic cleansing fire drawing loads you hold inside outward to be released. Let the responsibility for the outcome of your class and your students' experience lift off of you. YOU don't make the class, the natural flow of Qi from your students and the event will make the class.

You have a general sense of the format of your class, but let that go too. Let all responsibility and rigid planning for the class lift off of you. Walk into the class as a new student would, open to possibility, there to enjoy the time with the others, not responsible for making it a success.

This will lighten you energetically, and you will be calmer, your voice will be lighter and more fun. That change in your demeanor and resonance of your voice will profoundly shift the mood of the class.

Always remind your students that there are only 3 reasons to come to class or to practice at home, and those 3 reasons are:

1) To breathe

2) To loosen up
3) To play

Remind your students that 'whatever goals you have for tai chi, improving balance, breathing, immune system, sports performance, well-being, whatever ... just let go of that goal.'

There is only one reason to do Tai Chi and Qigong ... because it is FUN to do. It feels goooood to slow down, and to feel the pleasure sensations of the body breathing, loosening, and being massaged by effortless motion.

All the myriad benefits are just gravy. They will come ... just let go of your grip on them ... breathe ... loosen ... have some fun ... and all the benefits will come.

Remind your students that when Chinese people go to practice Tai Chi or Qigong, they don't go to "WORK OUT," they say they are going to "PLAY Tai Chi." That small reminder can help you have fun.

Also, when you mess something up in class, as all humans do, lighten up on yourself, make a joke out of it. That will help your students lighten up on themselves. 

 

 

Bill Douglas, Founder of World Tai Chi & Qigong Day

Author of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to T'ai Chi & Qigong" (Penguin, New York)

2009 Inductee to the Internal Arts Hall of Fame

 

 

 

 

In the coming 4th edition of Bill's best selling tai chi book, the Appendix A - Tai Chi & Qigong Yellow Pages will offer a global directory of Tai Chi & Qigong teachers and schools. If you have not listed your classes in the WorldTaiChiDay.org events/classes directory, do so now, so that readers of Bill's globally published book can find you.

 

YOUR WTCQD MOMENT OF ZEN

HAVE YOU UPDATED YOUR WTCQD LISTING IN THE NEW STATE-OF-THE-ART EVENT/CLASSES DIRECTORY?

DID YOU KNOW THAT WORLDTAICHIDAY.ORG'S DIRECTORY HAS CONNECTED OVER ONE-MILLION OF OUR VISITORS TO LOCAL T'AI CHI AND QIGONG TEACHERS AND CLASSES!

HAVE YOU JOINED THE NEW WORLD HEALING DAY / WORLD TAI CHI & QIGONG DAY FACEBOOK-LIKE SOCIAL NETWORK?

GET CONNECTED WITH THE WORLD OF MIND-BODY HEALING!
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