Lately I’ve been thinking about the differences between Tai Chi and Yoga and why yoga dominates Tai Chi in popularity even though they are both mind-body exercises. As a practitioner of yoga for almost ten years and a Tai Chi practitioner for over five years I’m often puzzled at this question myself. I for one am not able to stop either exercise as I love the benefits I get out of both. Here is a basic run down of some of the advantages that I have found by practicing Tai Chi and yoga.

Tai Chi

In the beginning I was drawn to Tai Chi because it was a martial art – or so I thought. I now believe that I was drawn to it because it teachers us to move differently. The first time I took a Tai Chi class I was amazed at the energy I felt moving through my palms and arms. Later I learned that the Tai Chi is not the “Qi” or energy that we think of most in Chinese Medicine rather it translates to Grand Ultimate Fist. However, after practicing Tai Chi and working as an acupuncturist and I do realized that it is a sort of martial Qi Gong (which literally means Qi Work).

After a few weeks of regular Tai Chi practice I began to realize that Tai Chi allowed some muscles to relax in my body while others began to strengthen. This is particularly true of some of the posture stabilization muscles like the paraspinals, multifidi, and rototores group. This muscles along with some of those in the pelvic bowl and the abdominal muscles allow us to stand straight as a flag poll.

The importance of this as follows: correct posture and alignment help move our bodies into what I call optimal functioning alignment. Did you know as little as a 3-5 mm shift in our occipital bone (back of the lower skull) can cause chronic headaches, and partial hearing loss. Imagine what happens when our hips shift forward and up. Imagine if you are standing with incorrect posture even three hours and day and once you fix that how much more energy you’ll have.

Now imagine that your body in optimal functioning alignment is a perfectly aligned machine. We don’t allow our cars to ride on the road with balancing them right? Well why do we go around with 1 shoulder higher than the other or one hip all jacked up? (Try it look in the mirror – or have your friend, wife, mother ect check your leg length by lying down and pulling your legs together and see if one is longer than the other).

Imagine your body’s alignment focusing so that both the pelvis and the sphenoid bone (an amazing facial bone) are balanced and then your breathing becomes open – not in just one nostril but both. We don’t breathe out of one lung do we? Imagine that with correct alignment we can start to move with purpose, strength, power, and more natural and fluid movements. Good God (said ala Will Farrell) we’re very awkward in some many movements.

Tai Chi teachers us to move naturally using positions that use share movements through our bones, our tendons, ligaments, and joints. It allows for proper circulation so our hands and feet and other extremities (do we have any others?) are actually warm and relaxed.

Tai Chi teachers us to move fluidly and allows our bodies begin to feel – not think relaxed, but feel relaxed. There’s a difference. You’d be surprised how many people think they are relaxed and during an acupuncture treatment they find out how tight they are!

When weight lifters get that “pump” from lifting around iron – yes think Arnold – what is happening is that more muscles fibers are activated then normally. Eventually as muscles become toned – more muscles fibers cycle through an excitory process than a relaxed process – creating that look and feel of a pumped up body all the time.

In Chinese Medicine and in sports for that matter – this is not where true power and strength come from. It comes from relaxed, loose muscles with proper alignment! Just look at sprinters and swimmers two of the biggest power sports out there – what are they doing before they get ready to compete – shake, shake, shaking that booty. Well maybe at least their arms, legs, neck ect.

Tai Chi is amazing. It’s taught me the value of natural strength, how to move like a tiger, fly like a crane and walk like a turtle. Okay well maybe not all of that, but the next time your out check out the natural movement of a squirrel as it looks down from above running on a telephone wire – perfect natural movement.

After about 50 years maybe I will begin to understand it more. This is typical of the Asian mentality towards true mastery. As a side note what other sport can you do for 70 years and be way better than you were at 20. Isn’t this something we should all invest in! I digress…

Yoga

My yoga education actually started when I was in 6^th grade with my gym teacher Jennifer Minter ran a 6-week session for us. I still remember trying my first arm balances and my head hurting after a :30 second headstand.

In my early late teens I attended a few more classes and I began for the first time to feel how my body could be more open and relaxed than it was. Especially living that college lifestyle eating pizza, drinking cheap beer, and pumping as much iron as I could – more is better right? Wrong.

After I graduated college my mother – a long timer practitioner of yoga – started teaching classes. I decided that it couldn’t hurt to try a class at my local gym and I feel in love with yoga. My muscles – once closed, taught, and wound began to unravel.

In my few decades of living on this Earth it was hard to believe how many memories, frustrations and stuck emotions were hiding in my hips, hamstrings and shoulders. I began to understand what it meant have alignment and my woeful posture slowly began to take proper shape.

Yoga opens, relaxes muscles, and teachers your body alignment in differing postures. Now you’re saying alignment and natural positioning – isn’t that like Tai Chi?

Bridging Both Practices

As I near my 10^th year and perhaps eight year of consistent at least once per week yoga practice it dawns on me that without the Tai Chi and yoga I would be missing something. While Tai Chi has taught me how to move naturally and in a fluid manner yoga has opened my body in a way that Tai Chi didn’t. Sometimes I think to myself how can I do both of these practices and truly achieve mastery in either one of them? Maybe I can’t, but I love them both so much I will continue on my path.

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