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Hmmm.... I know what you mean. I think you can try to not be so demanding with foresight, which will no doubt be alot of effort for you, or just be as demanding as you please, and finally you will be forced into being less demanding in a way you won't like. Either way it doesn't matter, the fact that you will need to change you won't like it. Nobody does, in all the people i have taught anyhow. Lets see, if nobody wants to talk to you anymore or you lose friendships over your being demanding you will have some gentle force to change. If you practice qigong intensely and demand hours of practice of yourself each day, the energy will actually force you to be less demanding. I had this experience, you realise you are literally fighting against yourself. It's being shown, open to suggestion and learning from whats around you that cultivation is all about. When you realise this it can be easier to change. Sometimes the long way is quicker and easier than what appears to be a short cut. "But especially regarding my dispipline i feel perfectly fine.... sadly my entire culture.... *sigh* " (paraphrased because for some reason i can't paste) This is the funniest part of your post. This is typical western thought, like humans are right, and the land is for us. Natural disasters are just an annoyance and set us back, etc. U belong to your environment, you are not the light in your sick culture. The culture and you're country is you, the time is now, flow and flourish with it. It's not the goal to seperate yourself from everything and have all the good (because the bad will search you out believe me), rather change your reactions to your environment. Maybe when the people tell you you need to change they are right. Maybe change in a way that you feel comfortable with AND sees you get along better with others. I not sure which iron shirt you are talking about but if it is anything like the HT version if you be gentle and take it slow i'm sure you could start straight away. In fact i think it would probably help if you are retaining.

" If you close your eyes can you know the existance of the world beyond the range of your eyesight? Or is it just a thought." If u can stop your thoughts like you said u can then u know its not a thought. If you feel it, then it is a feeling. Next you just need to decide if this feeling is enough to conclude that you know or not, or how many different feeling all pointing to the same answer will be enough. But i think you knew that already. I think the real lesson here is stop being lazy, wake up, and think for yourself and stop trying to get others to make up your mind for you. A goal of cultivation should be to feel quietly confident about your understanding.

what you see is a slice of the thing everybody else sees. Everyones experience is real and they all fit in together after all they were made from the same things on the same earth. Thats 1 explaination. Another one is how do u really know there are 'others'? How do u know everything u have seen and done wasnt just in your own mind? What are u trying to prove with your understanding of it all. If it is real, not real, the same or different it doesnt really matter, all that matters is how you feel about it, that is if you think about it, or it matters not at all if you dont both these explainations stand up mathematically and logically depending on what you see and know.

I think there are lots of posts similar to this already. My thoughts are, yes drugs can open your mind very quickly to everything but this is completely different to spiritual development through meditation. Spiritual development is not a microwave pizza, it takes years for all round understanding of the forces at play in everyday life. Similar to the saying, you pay peanuts, you get monkeys....

So i started my pulse diagnosis training the other day with this doctor and felt about 60 peoples pulses in the 8 hrs. Have to say i felt i was doing better at it after 2-3 hours than after the 8 hours. The different pulses just started blending into 'just a pulse' that was indistinguisable. Men's pulses were much easier to feel than females and some people i could barely feel at all. I could start to feel weaker pulses in different finger locations indicating what area might be wrong but not as to the detail of what was exactly wrong there. High blood pressure seemed to be the easiest thing to feel. I do feel relaxing was very important because after i was told to feel certain things at certain finger positions my brain did start trying to 'expect' something rather than just feeling what was there. I've found my own pulse does change after eating a heap of sweet junk foods or after qigong. It changes throughout the day. I wonder if anyone has advise they could give me while trying to learn the diagnosis? I'm also trying to find not too complex information on the internet or in books that can help me learn chinese style diagnosis. Also I found a cool tongue diagnosis information site on the net that you guys can look at if your interested at: http://beyondwellbeing.com/herbs/tongue-diagnosis.shtml Cheers, Louis.

We always see youtube vids where they are measuring chi, etc. Alot of them look like high tech devices but i do remember seeing at least one very simple one. Anyone have any knowhow in bio electric fields that could give some ideas into how to make a device that could measure emitted qi? Even a very simple one that measures the presence of it or not.

Just wondering how is stillness movement qi projection at healing common cold / flu symptoms?

..... I just looked into this teleportation thing a bit deeper recently... I mean if china was where the masters were at before the communist government came in they shouldn't have worried about getting put in jail if they could teleport themselves out. Yeah people have been able to do things through time but who knows how they did it. In my experience all magical things aren't magical when you understand them, they're only magical when u don't know how they work. I think if there really are superpowers well it is more of the brain getting leverage to be able to do something it wants to do. If it doesn't know how to do it well of course it can't. First it can't walk, then a baby learns to walk and it can get from a to b with ease. Then it doesn't know how to heal somebody else, but it feels the chi and can command it and uses it to heal others. Perhaps at the highest level it is not the chi that heals but rather the belief of understanding of how it works. It then only needs to be wished. If you really believe and just do it you can probably do it, energy cultivation is probably just a tool of the mind that gives you the impression that you have the power to do something, when infact no power was needed at all it was only a belief. Those mums who saved their babies by lifting up a car to save them didn't do any energy cultivation, they just did it because they believed they could. Just mussings...

I believe it. I have seen the whole mind body and kick arse moves series, you should watch it it's very cool. The guy can ding a huge bell with his kiai from a decent distance away. Not sure if that was in ur clip i didn't watch it but i have seen it in the series. I knew the quote straight away haha.

Yeah it wasn't for anything serious really, not to prove or disprove or getting the entire range or anything like that just was thinking about something to play with that can actually measure any part of it. I have seen things you can plug into a pc that come with software but these things are rediculously expensive for my purposes. I was thinking more like wrapping wire around a toilet roll or something simple like that haha. I will have a look through what you guys have posted thanks.

I think it is hard to change body temperature but it's possible. Some scientists discovered nothing cools you down as fast as green tea, cold i'd be guessing. But using your mind you can just imagine you are swimming in a cold sea, imagine the cold water is going under your armpits and around your bum, all the places that make you shiver when some cold water gets into your wetsuit. Try to re-experience it in your mind, and keep it going over and over (like ya do when you're pissed off with someone) so it builds up. Do that for 10 mins and relax into it and enjoy it and you will at least feel cooler, not sure about actual temperature. Another way is not to associate with the heat, just be aware the environment is hot but you are cool. Feel it hot on your skin and feel how lucky you are you're cool on the inside. It's hard because you're not but it's all just mind games. It gets to like 47 degrees C sometimes here in the summer. I find when i get into the sweet spot mentally though i don't feel hot or cold, i just don't think about it. Sometimes the heat even feels good, just pushes you deeper into that balance. Actual heat doesn't really matter too much percieved heat is more to the point i think. I'm sure even budda would have cooked if they boiled him in a pot. I think cold food from the fridge cools me down too. You can get cool shirts here too, the football players wear them when it's hot. Bit like a vest and it keeps you cool somehow no idea how. Soak your hair in cold water, that keeps you cool for a while, this was great until i started going bald If i do iron shirt I i get hot all over even if it's freezing outside so i guess thats one way to get warm. Any type of physical activity, alcohol blocks out the cold too But with the mental balance thing we did tai chi in China in -14 degrees or something without gloves on. As soon as i thought 'hmm my hands aren't cold...' then my fingernails started burning, burning from cold that was not chi Got into the balance again and i was fine again.

I know one way we can clearly all see into the past. Look into the night sky and see the stars, the light from them is hundreds or thousands of years old.

Yeah i agree, you don't need pumped up muscles, just need some physical activity every day. I used to be the athlete that got colds every month, now i have balanced internal with external and only get sick when i am silly enough to push myself over the edge. If you are god you can play with the humans, animals and other forms of life like chess pieces through your influence, but i think it is a gift to be able to actually physically do things with your own body. If your body is strong your link to the physical is stronger and 'you' can do more. Just my way of looking at it, not to say it's the right way. I was only speaking the truth as i saw it and the main thing i meant is that your spiritual strength seemed exceptional and in my opinion your physical didn't match your spiritual development. If you do the exercise like you posted in your blog every day well i'm sure you are very physically fit. I did mention i could have beeen mistaken. And hippy, well i didn't mean to be rude i just thought it was the best way to express my feelings as to talking to birds and all the things you mention you would laugh about as being hippy in your post above. In Australia and especially amongst the people i know nobody would feel it was rude to be called a hippy. So perhaps a cultural difference. Also i didn't even think there was any competition between your system and HT or any other system, i see things just as they are, my intention was only to get a better understanding of your system, and so i bought your book. There was certainly no insult or bad intentions at all and i apologize if that's how it was perceived. I will try to 'open my mind' haha But thankyou for taking the time to respond it shows your keeness to help others. I just would like to add i am even getting a bit sick of HT now. I think how good a system is should only be rated by how much you enjoy practicing it. For later in my opinion all systems become a hinderance.

What you say in your post mjjbecker sounds reasonable.... i respect it. Yes, not the same attainments, but reach the same quality of attainments, though different they may be. Would you agree? It depends on what you meditate on, and this is the area where your wisdom will grow. I have had several attainments and they all came after spending time focusing on a different thing and my attainment although it was a surprise to me was to do with my focus. How long have you practiced this system for mjjbecker? Have you practiced other systems? Have you ever worked with the lower physical or middle emotional chi levels? Mmm the interview is very good, it explains alot of what i wanted answering. The interviewer is quiet good with his questions and michael answers well. From my limited knowledge without practicing in this stillness movement system I do feel it fits exactly with what i have learnt from my own practice which is primarily HT and also being aware and watching the physical. It is approaching it primarily from the opposite end however. I usually concentrate on the physical which is directly connected to the spiritual, and also the chi or mental level. It's like this stillness movement is working on a reflection to what i usually do. Whether or not you want to fully furfill your spiritual destiny is a question worth asking however. At what cost to your ego? Nature is the physical, it can nurture or harm too, just like the spiritual. Keeping your family together for the sake of young children could be against your spiritual destiny but may help your kids grow up more happily and healthy. I mean there are many what if's and of course there are many arguments either way that could be discussed till the cows come home. I find it really interesting though, discussing this balance. I find in thetaobums in general alot of people overlook survival and the pleasure and joys that nature provides. Often i hear spiritual people pleased with themselves that they have overcome the fear of death... but i love to be alive, the move alive i feel the more i love it. I don't think you feel more alive than when you think you're going to die and you want to live. Balance of both is good, too much of either is unplesant. Perhaps it has to do with my age, when i become older i could see myself indulging more in my spiritual side. I believe a high percentage of people want (on a conscious level) to just get better so that they can go back to doing the things that are making them ill. Directing the attention to the physical as i do has the benefit of being able to do that i believe. Changing the spirit, well that is setting another course entirely and yes it is really fantastic but it depends on the person and what they want. Do they want to drop everything they're doing and furfill their spiritual destiny or do they just want to get better so they can keep doing what they're doing. In my experience playing around with this spiritual stuff is a bit like rubbing aladin's lamp, and making wishes with the gene - you may get what you want but you didn't want to lose what you had to lose to get it. Thats why i feel you need to be moral, otherwise you might get what you want but really lose something much more important. Thats another reason for balance, the best of both worlds. I'm not sure balance is spectacular though. For michael to transmit qi to make people shake like i have seen on a video his spirit must be very strong, but from what i see, his body is not in tip top shape (it may be, but just from what i see in the video doesn't look like it matches his spirit in development). The power of his spirit compensates for his body, just like a super fit person's body can compensate for a lack of spirit. In my experience i found keeping my body fit allowed my spirit to soar to higher heights, and attending to the spiritual also strengthened my body. I think both need to be addressed in balance. This nerve balancing thing michael talks about in the interview is new to me though. I have heard of it but have no experience with it. I can definately feel a link from the nerves in my spine to different organs and parts of my body however when i send chi to my spinal column, so i could understand on a basic level how it would work. I wonder is this a big part of getting pain elimination instantaneously? Or what is the principle part behind the pain elimination? Thats how i see this practice fits in with other practices from my experience anyhow, and it helped me find answers to most of my questions. I am always open to experiencing and trying new things and it would definately do me good to concentrate directly on the spiritual for some time to better aquaint myself with it since although i have experienced it, the spiritual would certainly be the weakest part of my practice and my view of it is very narrow. Damn i have spent all night on this post and listening to the interview, the internet sure does suck your time away

Hmmm the purpose of me asking is not to start any argument about who is right because on this forum these types of things go on forever, so after i mention my opinion on something once if it comes up again i won't repeat myself yet that doesn't mean i necessarily agree, just that i agree to disagree I think that all these things are the same with any practice, apart for the dantien thing *shrug*. I think all the practices are really using the same powers and having similar experiences they just go about it a different way. Healing tao does more clearing of the way to make it easier to go where it should go (through all the channels you clear out), or that i guess is the theory but it doesn't always work that way. I think just concentrating on the dantien is still doing this to some lesser extent, you are still directing the energy. Is this John Chang the almighty on youtube? Seems strange the guy that went there for healing in the movie tring to get his eye fixed but he ended up dying a short time later (well that what it says in the movie). Doesn't sound like the magestic healer that people seem to think he is to me Has some cool tricks though it appears. How did you know this spirit was a high level immortal? Did he tell you? As far as i know there is noway to be sure if another has realised he is immortal or not. Of course infact we all use the same immortal life energy it's just if we realise it or not. Yeah i apologise i haven't gone through every post it is almost a book in it's self, i have read the book though and quiet a few posts and had specific questions so just asked away and thought i'd see what responses i got. Not me, i was just asking, and how you know. Yes i agree, but i've practiced daily for around 9 years and it seems every method has it's end at the same point and so i wanted to get some grasp of how other's experience of their path using this technique was different. Discussion is good though, it gets both sides of the brain working and deepens understanding. Yeah this is spiritual healing. In my limited experience using the spirit to heal i found that the body needs to catch up. It is instant and starts immediate healing yet the body lags behind. Thats why i feel surprised to hear skin healing "before peoples eyes". If it is the spirit do you really need to channel it? wouldn't you're body be a bottleneck to the energy? Wouldn't it be better to ask the spirit to do it on it's own, uninvolving yourself and giving up responsibility for the healing so that the patient can gain the full power of the spirit? Thanks for your long reply brian and offer for a beer, i'm never one to turn one down, but i am in Australia too far away Whoops aparently i ran out of the number of quotes i could put in, now they are in " 's "That hippiness is what taoism is dude. Taoists are basically shamen, waving sticks and burning incense. It's just portrayed differnetly in china vs here" I don't agree, i lived in china for a few years and i never saw shamen waving sticks around. Rather TCM doctors with huge lines out the door, and qigong and tai chi experts that people weren't interested in learning from. Have you spent time in china or are you just saying what you imagine to be true? As you reach higher energy levels it'll make more sense, regardless of whether you have the judgement of it being hippy or not, because you will experience it very directly. I don't mean to say the energy is hippy, that is very real because you can do things with it. I'm talking about the talking birds and trees etc. I mean i feel i can have a convo with a tree and feel it's energy but how can i know this is true? How can i know it's not my imagination. I feel these things need to be tested in some way, otherwise it could just all be inside your head. A way of gaining intuition but there may be many ways, and they all link together. It may not be the tree or bird at all, it's just that that is what you are concentrating on at the time when it just comes to you and so you attribute it to that. "This system is different than others in that you don't have to worry about the engineering that has (in my opinion) encumbered other systems" Could be true, but i have found that the general rule is that form, and formless together are the best. This be in martial arts, sports or anything, unless we have no goal. Here we have a goal, to heal. "Those who do the energy-work quickly realize the system simply works and attempting to either intellectualize or mystify is simply a distraction." Yes very true as is with all systems i believe, but don't you want to know? To intellectualize is to more stabily bring about a stronger belief, and a stronger belief means a stronger result. Both form and no form together. Don't need to have everything controlled but some control and understanding is good. Anyone know if the recommendation with 24/7 awareness is still to do seated meditation too?

Hi, There sure seemed to be alot of positive talk about Michael's book so i bought it and borrowed my mum's kindle and read most of it. I was a bit dissapointed because it sounded very hippyish and i am surprised that so many people took to it, although it is great that it sounds people are benefitting from it. I have a few questions or things i would like to discuss... for michael or his experienced students... When you say practice 1 or 3 hours a day, and then it goes to 24/7 do you mean once you are aware of it throughout the day you should still be doing seated practice for 1-3 hours a day? Or once you can remain aware you don't need to do the seated one any more? I have done lots of Healing Tao for a long time and had huge energy, high pressured heat, stretching skin, purposely controlled electric shocks through meridians, and very fast digestion and need to go to the toilet etc, but to me it involves too much directing and not enough listening. Nomatter how much yin i try to draw in via energy and diet over time it becomes a struggle to get to sleep and yin in the body dries up. I find being aware and in the now, moment or wuwei, and especially being aware of the physical allows the energy to balance it's self naturally. Even doing as suggested in the book just concentrating on the dantien (even for 15 mins) is very stimulating for me, it heats up the yin and releases lots of energy. If i did 3 hours a day, within 3-4 days my body would be very accellerated with a hot swelling thumping in the dantien. The thing is that energy is being directed down to the dantien, all down into one dantien or 3 minds into one as they say in healing tao, but there are 3 dantiens. I have felt that by having the energy naturally settle in all 3 dantiens the energy is more settled and calm. Why do you bring all the energy to the lowest dantien? I guess the hippiness of listening to birds and ghosts or spirits etc is all developing of the listening which healing tao doesn't have. But i guess being in the moment and watching with awareness is a kind of receptiveness that is similar. It says in the book that this is 'high level' healing yet to me 'high level' doesn't mean it is any better than 'low level'. Infact i always felt that high level stuff was just the icing on the cake for lower level stuff, to aim for only high level things was like trying to win a fight when you only learnt to chi knockout but didn't learn to punch. I guess though that since spirit and matter are so closely linked and all matter is energy then a change in energy makes a change in matter, just like a change in the physical changes the spiritual. To me high level means working from the spirit and in my experience when i work from the spirit i can't understand or know how or why things happen but they just do. I have limited experience with this because i like to relate what is happening in a more scientific way, where i can draw a more direct line between cause and effect which i can't do with spiritual energy. Is this true for what you guys are doing or do you know what is happening in the healing process? Are you directing or just channeling? Do you try to pump in spiritual energy using breath or any other method, trying to increase the spiritual energy within yourself or transfered to another hoping for bigger and better results or do you just let it all do it's self? Healing tao goes deeply into different types of energy but it appears in Michaels method it is just concentrating on the dantien, not worrying about the source of the chi going there. How do you know it is high level spiritual energy if you don't know where it came from? If you haven't aquainted yourself with different qualities of chi? One thing i have concentrated on more and found to have good and semi permanant results (if the spirit doesn't insist on trying to go back as it was) is using chi, not spiritual energy to balance zang-fu organs by increasing circulation around particular organs that fits TCM theory. What i do seems to bring the body more into balance and then the spirit find's it more difficult to continue on with a bad use of the body, however of course it still can - undoing my work. Today i tried to go straight for the spirit but i felt kinda spacey, and without direction. For some reason i never felt very comfortable with working with spiritual energy inside myself. I can channel it to others no problem but i don't feel relaxed when it is within me for some reason, maybe because i haven't played with it enough i don't know. It sounds like some very impressive healings have gone on using this method but as is usual i guess you mainly hear about the success stories. What percentage of people would you say you have gotten say 80%+ improvement with? Glad to hear people are having fun with it all. Thanks for any answers in advance. Louis!

I'm after some ideas for fixing constipation in my 2 year old son. It is very bad, he has had especially bad for almost 2 months now. His bum bleeds when he poos and he only poos every 5 days or so when my wife pokes her finger in his bum to try to dig some poo out and really forces him to poo. He hates trying to poo now. I think his colon must have stretched from all this constipation making it easier to become constipated. I need to try to fix this as soon as possible so he doesn't try holding it it making the problem worse. We have given him suppositories and baby laxatives for a week to clear out any dried poo in his colon (we needed both, one on their own wasn't enough) weening him off those meds. Then we gave him a pear every day to cool and moisten lung / large intestine, and i did chi nei tsang stomach massage, especially massaging under his ribs along the large intestine from his right to left side and down. After we stopped the laxatives n suppositories he was alright for about a week until we ran out of pears and he went a couple of days without, and i started just massaging him every 2-3 days, then it's just gone back to square one again. We've done this 3 times now, this is the third time and the laxative is hardly doing anything anymore. This kid eats healthy food, with heaps of fiber. He eats fruit every day and quiet alot of veges every day. He has wheat bix for breaky and all the veges so heaps of fiber. My wife is always making him drink water too. He does eat a bit of white rice but honestly i doubt the difference between brown or white rice is going to make such a big difference that this super dry poo will become moist. I can't feel his pulse because his wrist is too small and i can't get a feel for it. But he is a very excitable child and everyone comments on how happy he is. I think he's probably a bit on the yang side though because he will never just drift off to sleep in the car, or if there is anything happening around him. He's full of energy all the time, not like some other kids his age who are happy to just sit and eat. Next i want to try to stop him drinking milk incase he is allergic, because i read that milk can cause this problem. Apart from that i'm out of ideas. It must be something that is causing this problem because i don't think his diet wouldn't be the cause, and especially since he is so young. Want to get him some zeng ye tang herbal formula too but i don't think thats a long term solution. If anyone can think of anything else please let me know. Thanks.

Just thought i would follow up incase somebody else has any trouble. He got a cold and my wife being a worry wart got him antibiotics. These antibiotics made him poo more and even digest food much faster, he was eating like a horse. After one week they ran out and then we just really encouraged him to poo each day, saying to him to make a snake to scare his sister etc. Really made a big deal out of it and how good he was when he pooed. Within a few weeks of him pooing every day he hasn't really had any more trouble. We still make a big deal out of it and encourage him lots and it's been working for a couple of months now without any medicine. Just shows the problem was in him holding it in because he didn't want to stop playing! All the medicine in the world can't fix a problem you create yourself, especially when you resist the medicine!

^^^^ haha. I don't agree. I think it is good, i have practiced for years. In aikido we use wooden swords and i can resist them quiet well (slow application high force) using the chi pressure. I don't know about mantak chia's tai chi i only read the book, but i do another style i learnt from a teacher in china. The book explains quiet well the tai chi concepts. I would suggest that it is quiet a good form because it is short, that way you can master it more quickly and start to reap the benefits. You won't get many benefits while you're learning some long one that lasts for an hour or something! The benefit comes once you know how to do it automatically and can relax into it You don't need to do iron shirt to do tai chi. But it certainly boosts your feel for tai chi and makes it easier to do it correctly. It helps you heal yourself too. I'd go as far to say as iron shirt I is the best or 2nd best practice for time vs result.

Thanks for your answers. I will try to give him some prune juice and vege juice and keep the massages going, see if it makes him better. Giving him soy milk too now instead of milk so hopefully all together it works. Thanks again!

He probably does have that now after having such hard poo. I think it will heal again when he gets over this. Thanks for your replies. Keep battling on.. ahhh parenthood!

That's my neck of the woods. In summer i'm down there most weekends snorkling and spearing fish! Been a bit windy for this weekend though, the water won't be clear. Torquay, Anglesea and Lorne are nice. Apollo Bay is good too. The 12 apostles are famous though theres hardly any left and i don't think they're that cool to look at. If you keep going on further the blow hole is pretty good to see though i haven't been there since i was little.

Yes enlightenment may be the end of the search of truth, but you can continue to collect trophies forever. Sometimes it is fun to enjoy collecting and to lose yourself so you can search out the truth again.

I think theres lots of different types of yoga and lots of types of qigong too. At higher levels they kind of blend together closer and closer. I guess it depends what teacher you have and what you are taught, what you read and how you go about your practice. If your muscles are tight, do stretching yoga, if your mind body movement coordination is bad do tai chi. I have got some real good exercises from yoga teachers from videos and off the internet that do the same thing that i do in qigong but at a slightly different angle that is more appropriate for me. I think once you have a good understanding from one path and have some idea of how things work, you can pick and choose bits and pieces from wherever you like and make it your own. As to the mental part, well i think either way you still reach the same peak of the mountain. It just depends if you prefer to take the sloped path, the steps, the ski lift or just wander your way up through the rocks. Whatever appeals to you will draw you towards that path. I would strongly discourage someone who regularly practices yoga to drop it and go to qigong because sure you will have lots of cool stuff happen while learning qigong, but you will realise how much you already had when lose it from stopping your yoga practice.

I never thought there would be so many pages and posts about horse stance. I thought it was just standing with your legs bent. Go on the balls if you want or just balance the weight out over your whole feet. Move around if your legs get tired. Just do it the way that you'd like to improve on, if you want to put all the weight on the balls of your feet to strengthen them for some certain reason then just do it. Otherwise why not just spread the weight out evenly over the whole foot so you just strengthen the whole foot in balance. Horse stance is ok for meditating or doing neigong so you can concentrate on what you are doing with the chi but why would you want to just strengthen your legs statically when you can strengthen all your supporting muscles and tendons while doing tai chi as low as you can. It would take less time out of your day too because your legs really get a hammering when you do tai chi low. When i was in China we would have 7-8 hour classes every sat n sunday and sometimes it hurt to walk for 2-3 days after until my legs strengthened up. Your leg muscles can take a pounding they are the biggest muscles in your body, just respect any pain you feel, and you will be find to push yourself quiet hard, so long as you are healthy to begin with