windwalker

If you're visualizing something you're actually not feeling what's really going on. your inner awareness is being turned to an imaginary feeling that one has not yet felt. oddly enough this imaginary feeling will tend to override any real feelings that develops from the practice. Often causing one to ignore them, not matching what they imagined them to be. Not good. The better choice would be to do the exercises with a quiet mind, stillness, allowing feelings, perceptions to come and go as they will. In time exercise will produce results that one will not have to imagine.

Why call it taiji ? I think any type of movement done with focused awareness would be good for what your looking for and have experienced. Yoga, qi gong, zen walking, and others might be more accessible and address directly what you might be looking for. Taiji for kids, ect are a kind of marketing....really is far from the point of taiji practice. Hope this helps,,,just some thoughts reading your post.

A lot of what is mentioned is kind of culturally dependent. In most Asian countries they still use the squat toilets. Kids are carried on the back or front at an early age...all of this goes into loosening and opening up the hip joints and making the low back very flexible. As many have mentioned all things should be done in moderation according to ones own body, not an ideal that should be reached. "small steps" yep found out the hard way many yrs back trying to do something that looked easy, thinking that all my time in CMA would allow me to do it.....While I was able to do the movement the way in which I did it, injured my legs took a while for them to recover. something that might help in loosening the back and gua

some basic thoughts on standing

In Taiwan its called a Trump bird

winter time practice

my friend, hope where you are now, you get a chance to meet him,,,maybe you will find its not anger and not so old

A cautionary note. I once worked for a Vietnamese director in the semiconductor industry who I gave some books on Qigong to. It was his interest. I would meet him a couple of months later, he asked me if I knew any Qigong healers. He had followed some of the methods prescribed in the books and now his sleep was interrupted , he was having other symptoms that most of the western doctors he visited could not account for. As others noted our bodies are working with its own innate intelligence. Anything regarding qi gong done using a direct/ forced way without being specifically guided by somebody who knows what they're doing, is done at one's own risk.

"Without consulting with its users, Microsoft has installed an establishment media browser extension, purportedly designed to rate the accuracy of news websites, as a default extension on mobile versions of its Edge browser. In practice, it creates a news blacklist by warning users away from sites including Breitbart News, The Drudge Report, and the Daily Mail." https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/01/23/microsoft-teams-with-establishment-newsguard-to-create-news-blacklist/ not just apple

Not a fan of apple, do agree with an informative well written post. As noted there are many other corporations similar in nature very limited in the freedoms they expouse in function.

The physical arts are all very interesting. In Beijing was introduced to a noted teacher of the style although never practiced it, had I not found taiji many yrs ago it would have been something I would have been interested in exploring on many levels. I did find this interesting in the notes under the clip relative to the thread. "In the 1960's it became nicknamed as Shaolin Rouquan (Soft Boxing) which this name also prevailed in 1980's when Shaolin was trying to re-construct its lost arts. Today it is also known as Chanmen Taijiquan (Zen Style Taijiquan) or sometimes as Fomen Taijiquan (Buddhist Style Taijiquan)."

This created based on buddist traditions "Da Bei Quan (Great Compassion Boxing) is a rare style which was passed in Beijing by Buddhist monk Qi Yun (1904-1966), who created it by combining some of the basics from martial methods of the central plains such as Chaquan, Hongquan and Huaquan that he studied in his youth with Buddhist ideologies thus whilst slow like Taijiquan its movements contain structure like those parent styles. Since after marrying in his twenties, his wife passed away of illness and then Qiyun did not know how to care for his daughter so he took her to his family home and then left decided to become a monk at Fayuan Temple. He had much regrets and was saved by the Great Compassion Sutra (Da Bei Zhou) which he then took as the symbolism of his boxing practice, thus Dabei Quan was founded. (Another story tells of learning from other monks and that he was the last descendant of this dying art but this is less likely).. In the 1960's it became nicknamed as Shaolin Rouquan (Soft Boxing) which this name also prevailed in 1980's when Shaolin was trying to re-construct its lost arts. Today it is also known as Chanmen Taijiquan (Zen Style Taijiquan) or sometimes as Fomen Taijiquan (Buddhist Style Taijiquan). It exercises the body, and the mind, with stress on the latter. The movements combine hardness with softness, stretch tendons and relax joints, movements are connected, light and open."

how do you know, can you do any of what you've posted

It's not whether they're worth learning or not. It's culturally entwined from the culture which it came from. Worth learning? Depends on context, need, and expectation. For some things, for example Chinese medicine this might be something that is required to know and understand in order to prescribe treatment and diagnose conditions. They're also Chinese martial arts that follow this pattern in line of thought. Xing yi, for example. The clip talks about the five elements as well as other things pertaining to Chinese culture.

A very big question much of it depends on you, your experience where you're at. I would always advise to look for a group or a teacher that one can ask questions of directly. Not having access to a group or teacher I would advise looking for what are called passive approaches , as opposed to active ones. There are many here on this site who could share and provide you with their experiences regarding different qi gong practices.

The main difference is that taiji is a martial art that embodies many aspects of chi gong but it's not the central point of the practice. Qi gong， the central point of the practice is the practice itself. For most people who practice in the Parks their taiji practice can be classed as a type of Qigong no longer vible as a martial art.

One might say the point of it gives them the perspective of understanding they are already immortal.

Would be the one who accords with your understanding at this time. In the future as your understanding deepens this may change. This teacher seems to have the same flavor.

There are many, giving the power and authority to choose one that you have to deal with to others. It's'not something I would recommend. As a grunt feild medic, we sometimes would rotate in for some hospital duty. I can remember looking out at the cold poring rain from a med ward I was working on, 97th gen hospital， Frankfurt Germany, back in the 70s, wishing I was back out there. I can also remember literally sleeping in a rain filled mud puddle, very late at night, too tired to move to a new location back from a long day of patrolling with the squad I was assigned to. The military is a very unique lifestyle. One that requires a lot of discipline, fortitude, endurance and mental toughness. It will help build and provide a training ground to acquire the skill sets, one that can break one in the process, mentally and physically. It's all good until your hurt or dead. A friend wrote this, maybe some can find something in it that resonates. " You may have heard your own lost child somewhere along the way. It’s comes as a faint intuition, perhaps more a feeling than a sound. It’s one of those things we tend to brush aside, tend to rationalize away. It calls out, asking that you turn toward it… especially during those times when the your defenses are most activated. It reaches up through the veil of the unconscious, trying to be found...trying to be heard. As long as this voice goes un-heard, the un-seen hand of one’s defenses will continue to shape one’s decisions, appearing for all the world as “fate.” http://focusingemptiness.com/index.php/blog

most programs for the poor, only help keep the poor, poor..dependent on more government programs... Its the way gov. controls the voting blocks that vote for it..... people like free stuff, as long as they dont understand who is really paying for it.