Yoga and Tai Chi

For the vast majority of ordinary practitioners, yoga and Tai Chi are essentially both physical and mental cultivation systems that center on "the body, breath, and heart working together at the same frequency." There is no absolute superiority or inferiority between the two. As long as they suit their own needs, they can be practiced separately or even in combination. There is no need to fall into either-or factional opposition.

When I first came into contact with sports rehabilitation, I practiced Ashtanga for three years. At that time, I was obsessed with unlocking various difficult postures, including Crane Zen, Wheel Pose, and Cross Horse, until I strained my hamstring muscles by trying Monkey Pose. Later, my old knee injury recurred, and the doctor did not allow me to do too strenuous joint flexion and extension movements, so my mother dragged me to the Tai Chi team in the small square of the community. I practiced Yang Style Tai Chi with Master Chen, who was nearly 70 years old. I practiced this practice for a year and a half.

At first, I always felt that Tai Chi was too "gritty". I could perform a set of 24 poses without breaking a sweat. How could it be as good as doing Ashtanga and performing Sun Salutations once to make my whole body clear? It wasn't until Master Chen adjusted the pole for me and put his fingers on my waist that I swayed three times before I could stand still. He said with a smile, "Your yoga practice is all about surface strength, and the roots are floating." I stood on the Wuji pole for 20 minutes that day. For the first time, I felt that the soles of my feet were stuck to the ground, and even my breathing was half slower than usual.

What’s interesting is that the “orthodox” factions on both sides actually don’t think highly of each other. My previous yoga instructor always said that Tai Chi has no active muscle activation. After practicing for a long time, core strength will drop quickly, and it is easy to round the shoulders and hunchback. ； Master Chen also always complains that the young people practicing yoga today are "like stretching noodles". If you forcefully break the joints, sooner or later problems will occur. Don't tell me, both of these statements are not unreasonable - there is indeed a girl around me who has been practicing fitness yoga for half a year, and she forced her shoulders to take a pose photo and caused a shoulder impingement. ； There are also some men who blindly learned Tai Chi from online videos, and their knees buckled in while standing, and they ended up being in so much pain that they couldn't walk. Essentially, it's not a problem with the project, it's with the wrong way of practicing and being too eager for quick success.

Last year I went to Suzhou to attend a physical and mental healing workshop and met a yoga instructor from Rishikesh. When we chatted, I learned that he had actually studied Tai Chi for six years with a living Yang-style Tai Chi successor. Now he incorporates the silk-winding power of Tai Chi into his teaching. In the twisting and supporting postures of yoga, for example, when doing the twisting triangle pose, you don't have to deliberately turn your waist to the maximum angle, but slowly follow the strength of the waist and hips. He said that after adjusting the teaching method, the incidence of waist injuries and knee injuries among students has been reduced by nearly 30%. That day, a group of us followed him in the morning to practice vinyasa flow yoga with silk winding, and in the afternoon we practiced slow yoga for half an hour with the guest Tai Chi master. We didn't feel any conflict at all, but felt comfortable all over.

In fact, for ordinary practitioners like us who don't want to be inheritors or compete in competitions, there is really no need to worry about which one to choose. If you usually sit in the office for a long time, your shoulders and neck are as stiff as stone slabs. If you want to quickly improve your posture, practice the shoulder-opening and hip-opening postures of Hatha Yoga for half a month. The results will be much faster than Tai Chi. ； If you are prone to anxiety and cannot fall asleep even after lying down for half an hour, or if you have old injuries in your joints that cannot bear the strength, then start with Tai Chi stances and slow walking frames. This will not put extra burden on your body. After practicing for half a month, you will feel that your sleep quality has improved significantly. I now do Tai Chi for 20 minutes in the morning to invigorate Qi and blood, and practice Yin yoga for 15 minutes to relax before going to bed at night. I had a mild lumbar disc herniation during the physical examination last year. This year’s reexamination has revealed a lot, and the doctors praised me for my good choice of exercises.

To put it bluntly, whether it is the "connection" that yoga emphasizes or the "harmony" that Tai Chi pursues, in the end what we seek is a comfortable body and a solid mind. They are just tools for use. How can there be any distinction between high and low?