Tai Chi Principles for Life

Many years ago, I learned the Yang Style short form. It was just a relaxing exercise, with some martial applications that were useful in life. As the years went by, my practice evolved. I started to understand cultivating, circulating and expressing chi. Chi Gong started to make sense to me. I got some certainty about being able to handle incoming force, and what it meant to use just the appropriate amount of it to get the job done.

Meanwhile, my husband, Rick Barrett, was studying more intensely and starting to teach and research. He wrote his first book, Taijiquan – Through the Western Gate. I had a front row seat to his explorations and he became my best teacher. 

While his focus was on the simplicity of the principles that make Tai Chi work, mine turned into how these principles could be used in day to day living. I was raising children and then working full time in a corporate atmosphere, so there was ample opportunity to try things out. 

Seeing students struggling with just simply being there is present time led me to study energy medicine, polarity, and then energy psychology. I use my tai chi knowledge in my coaching. I’ll be adding blogs on the various tai chi elements that may help people to deal easily with life. 

Here is a list of upcoming blog posts: 

• Objectification vs Engagement
• Song – Mental/Physical Relaxation
• Rooting – Connection to the Earth
• Circulating chi – Letting your Energy Move
• Energetic Coherence and the Connective Tissue System
• Separating Yin and Yang
• Motion in Stillness – Stillness in Motion
• Central Equilibrium 
• Ting Jin  – Listening