Tai Chi & Qi Gong Basics with Matthew Cohen contains two complete workouts, one featuring the ancient martial art of Tai Chi, and the other, Qi Gong, a healing art centered around breathing, meditation and exercise.
Instructor Matthew Cohen has over 30 years experience in the fields of of martial arts, yoga and healing. The DVD has a nice bio and Q&A section where Cohen talks about the history of Tai Chi and Qi Gong and his own introduction to both practices. He was a big fan of the David Carradine television show Kung Fu as a kid, and started taking classes and becoming proficient in martial arts. After an automobile accident, a friend suggested Tai Chi as rehabilitation therapy and he got hooked.
Cohen presents the Tai Chi (literally, supreme ultimate fist) moves in a very laid-back manner. He repeats the moves a few times, so even the more intricate foot and body positions seem attainable. And of course you can always skip back a step or freeze-frame if you're not sure about your foot positioning. But that really doesn't seem necessary, as he stresses that Tai Chi is a practice, so if you don't get it or bend as deeply the first time, you can try it on the next round.
The Tai Chi workout, set in a studio, runs about 30 minutes, with three workouts, plus a warm-up and cool-down. In the first workout he introduces basic standing postures (some beautifully named), including white crane spreads wings, golden rooster stands on one leg, play the pipa (guitar), ward off, deflect downward, snake creeping through the grass. The second workout is a slow practice run-through of each pose, and a fluid and choreographed version of all the poses together forms the third workout. Cohen works through all the postures, with his instructions as voiceover, which adds to the overall calmness of the presentation.
Tai Chi may be a slow and deliberate practice, but it is still a workout, as I was definitely feeling the burn in my legs and had worked up a sweat by the time we reached the cool-down. As Cohen reminds us, after you master the poses, you can speed them up or deepen the stretches to suit your own workout needs.
Article comments
1 - Loretta Wollering
Tai chi is awesome and I'm looking forward to more and more people getting to see for themselves how healing and empowering it can be. It's SO different from other practices. Infinitely complex, yet so easy in essence. Enjoy it and add years to your life from it.