I once attended a free introductory seminar to a meditation technique. The speaker described the meditation you’ve all heard of where you stare at a candle flame. “This is not meditation,” he said. He went on to describe the approach to meditation he had been taught.

Really? That’s not meditation?

A separate encounter I had with a professor.

“You practice meditation?”

“Yes.”

“Which meditation have you found to be the best?”

Both of these situations illustrate a common misunderstanding regarding meditation.

They both have, as an assumption, that there is a single optimum meditation that is “the one,” all others being pale imitations of the real thing…

This is not how it works.

Think of meditation like physical exercise. Which exercise is “the one?” Which one gives you the optimum benefits?

Good luck picking just one.

Just like exercises, different meditations offer you different benefits. The reality is that in order to have a well rounded set of benefits, you’ll need several different meditations.

The best answer for my professor’s question would be (and was) “It depends on what you want to develop.”

Are you trying to build energy? Develop a soft flexible mind? Train your mind intent into a laser that you aim at your opponent (like in Xing Yi)? Build sensitivity to another person’s mind intent (like in Tai Chi)?

Try picking one single meditation that will simultaneously and equally build all qualities (and all other benefits you might gain from other meditations). As far as we know, it doesn’t exist.
So, similar to when you exercise, keep in mind that different meditations will give you different benefits and qualities. Try to notice the overall benefits for each one. This helps you fine tune and accelerate your training, to be in control of your progress.

Clear Tai Chi Online course contains a multitude of meditations, both still and moving with a Tai Chi set, that will help you develop a variety of abilities and perceptions like the ones listed above.

These meditations will help you build energetic power (Nei Gung meditations), a calm perceptive mind (Be Here Now), and the ability to listen inside another person’s body (Ting Jing).

Best of all?

Clear, concise explanation and instruction for each meditation.

If you’re interested in checking out this online program, the first 14 days is only $5. This gives you a chance to explore the curriculum and get an idea for just how much material is contained in the online course (there’s a lot).

https://www.clearmartialarts.com/clears-tai-chi-online/

Stay safe,
Jared Voelker

I hear this question a lot:

“Am I too old to start training Tai Chi? I’m well aware that there are many masters in their 60s, 70s 80s & older that are capable of tremendous feats…but I’m fairly certain that most, if not all, started their training at an age earlier than mine.”

There is a myth that Tai Chi & the Internal Arts take a lifetime to master.

This is a MYTH.

Teachers who don’t teach spread this myth so that in 5, 10 or 20 years you won’t question the fact that you are still at a beginner level in these arts.

There is a grain of truth hidden in the myth (that makes it believable.)

These arts ARE deep enough that you can continue to gain skill and knowledge throughout your entire life.

Don’t confuse “can be studied for a lifetime” with “takes a lifetime to learn.”

Mastery = Comprehensive knowledge and skill in a subject.

20 years is plenty of time to become highly skilled. (for Tai Chi. Simpler arts will take a lot less time.)

Learning to fight effectively doesn’t take nearly as long.

When you look at masters that started young they were often considered masters in their late 20’s / early 30’s.

Yang Chen Fu for example began teaching publicly at 31 (so probably about 20 – 25 years of experience.)

He was one of the first Tai Chi folks to teach publicly so there’s no way he started doing that without already being a master of the art at the top of his game.

An example of someone who started a little later in life is master Li Nang-jan.

He started learning Xing Yi Quan when he was 37 and was considered a master by the time he was 47.

…and when you are older Tai Chi is much better suited to training than Xing Yi is.

No matter where you’re starting from our how old you are, you will gain a whole lot of benefit from the study of Tai Chi.

So, what’s the best place to get started?

Start trial membership of Clear’s Tai Chi Online.

This will give you everything you need to quickly build a strong internal foundation and then move on to intermediate and advanced internal skills.

In part 1 & 2 we’ve talked about how to find your intrinsic motivation, answered the question “what would it take for me to practice more?”

Now comes the final piece to tie everything together.

Ready?

You have to develop a plan.

This is not as complicated as it sounds.

Go back to your answer to the question “what would it take.” Let’s say you’re tired when you get home from work. The answer to your question might be something like “If I was going to practice more, I would need more energy.”

Now you develop a plan for how to get around this obstacle. You might decide to sleep more each night. You might do more marrow washing or other qigong. You might decide to take a short ten minute nap when you get home from work.

In short, you would do whatever it might take for you to have what you need so you can practice. If it’s keeping your space clean, having a quiet space, or getting the rest you need, that’s what you do.

Once you develop a plan, the issue becomes sticking with the plan. You might be asking what happens to keep you on track with this plan.

Go back to the first step of this process.

Find your intrinsic motivation (that list of five items that you put somewhere you can see). Every time you feel like not cleaning up your space, getting enough rest, or whatever else you need to do that’s in your plan to make sure that you’re able to practice, you check your list. You remind yourself why this is important to you.

This process took some time to outline, but it doesn’t take long to do in practice. There might be several obstacles holding you back from practicing more. You might need to develop more than one plan. That’s ok, because it’s not complicated or time intensive to put together.

And it’s worth it.

Now that you’re putting together a plan to increase your practice time, the next step is to make sure what you practice during that time is as effective as possible.

Go check out Clear’s Tai Chi Online for a vast library of in depth training that will maximise the effectiveness of your training sessions.

https://www.clearmartialarts.com/clears-tai-chi-online/

Stay Safe,
Jared Voelker

A little while ago, we talked about how to find your intrinsic motivation and talked about kicking the bad habit of relying on extrinsic motivation. In this post, we’ll look at the next step in increasing your rate of progress.

At this point, you need to sit down and ask yourself a question:

what would it take for me to practice more?

What you’re really getting at with this question is clarifying your obstacles. Human beings are funny creatures. Very often it’s seemingly insignificant things that hold us back from achieving big goals. Any musician will tell you that just having an instrument out of its case and available will dramatically increase the amount of practicing the musician does.

Think about that.

Something as simple as where a musician puts an instrument in their house dramatically changes the course of their practice (and skill level).

Now let’s look at this question again: What would it take for me to practice more?

There’s a trick to answering this question. To really find your obstacles, you have to think about what you think about when you decide not to practice.

Sit down in a quiet place for just a moment and close your eyes. Imagine you are at a time and place during your day that would be optimum for practicing. But you don’t want to. What makes you not want to practice?

The answers can vary.

You might say “I’m tired from work and I don’t have enough energy,” you might say, “My house is too messy and I just can’t get in the right frame of mind with this mess all around me,” or you might say, “I’ve got so many things to do and I don’t know which of them I should do right now…”

You get the idea.

Now that you’ve got a better idea of your obstacles, you can answer the original question.

For example, if having a messy house is affecting your frame of mind so that you’re not able to practice, the answer to the question would be “If I were going to practice more, it would take having a clean space to practice in.”

If you’ve got a bunch of things to do and you’re not sure what you should take care of right now, then the answer to the question would be “If I was going to practice more I would need a time designated specifically for practicing.”

To recap, we’ve talked about finding your intrinsic motivation, we’ve asked the question “what would it take for me to practice more,” and we’ve outlined a method for how to answer that question.

Next we’ll tie everything together and talk about the last step for getting you on your way to practicing more.

Until then, go check out Clear’s Tai Chi Online for a vast library of Tai Chi drills and exercises that will ensure you never run out ways to increase your skill.
https://www.clearmartialarts.com/clears-tai-chi-online/

Stay Safe,
Jared Voelker