INTRO
Hi, Welcome back to this Seated Tai Chi and QiGong session. My name’s Daphne and I’m here today to share with you some Tai Chi, QiGong and Low Impact Exercises that you can perform sitting down. So, let’s get started. If you haven’t already done so, check out the first video in this Seated Sessions Playlist. Clicking on the link will take you there because that video goes through, in a bit more detail, how to sit on your chair and position your posture correctly to get the best out of these exercises. I’m not going to spend much time on this today. So what I will do is start straight away with our warm up, our loosening off, so we’re going perch forward, planting our feet on the floor, grounding those feet, pushing into the floor. Lifting up our posture, and elongating that spine, keeping the breathing nice and calm.
WARM UP
And we’re just going to turn our head to the right, and back to centre. Doing all of our exercises within your own comfort zone. Keeping all our joints relaxed. Let’s take our chin to our chest and with care to the ceiling. Ear to our shoulder. Focusing on each area of the body that we are moving. And seeing if there’s any tightness and trying to relax it out. We’re going to do three shoulder rolls, and three forwards. Just using the top part of our back we’re just going to roll down, nice and slowly, and rolling back up. And open the chest. And again. We’re going to do Knocking on the Door, so just twisting from your waist. Turning within your own comfort zone, arms swinging freely. And bringing it back to centre. We’re going to peel our heel off the floor, and the other side. Let’s do that again. This time taking the foot completely off the floor if you can. We’re inhaling, big breath in, reaching to the sky and exhaling, coming down. And again, reaching up. Final one.
EXERCISE 1
OK let’s move on to our main exercises. Keeping our feet at parallel and posture tall. We’re Squeezing our Hands in tight and we’re pushing out. We’re doing that again. Squeezing tight, nice inhale, exhaling as we’re pushing out. Stretching those fingers out and again. Final time.
EXERCISE 2
Next exercise is Pushing a Small Qi Ball. So the small Qi ball, about the size of tennis ball, we’re going to hold in our right hand, just in front of our shoulder here. We’re going to use our left hand as a barrier in front of it. We’re going to engage our core and engage our arm muscle to push that Qi ball forward and open that barrier. And then we’re going to take it round and follow it the side, in like a little circular motion. So pushing forward and taking it round, and again. Focusing on those palms, as they’re moving forwards and to the side. Repeating that on the other side. Holding that Qi ball in our left hand this time. Right hand comes across the body in that barrier. We’re pushing it forward, taking it to the side. And one more.
EXERCISE 3
Holding a slightly bigger Qi Ball, about the size of a football this time. We’re turning the waist so that we’re looking to the right hand side and we’re lifting our ball towards the sky and Gazing at the Moon. We’re bringing it back down to centre. So you need to make sure that you’re just turning and lifting as far as you can, within your own comfort zone. Looking at the sky, gazing at the moon, bringing it back down to our centre. And again. And if you can each time, maybe just extend that reach a little bit further, gazing slightly behind you.
EXERCISE 4
Next exercise is Pushing the Waters. We are adding some footwork to this move. So we’re going to lift our right foot, heel, toe, we are replacing that foot into our parallel stance. Then we’re going to push down, using the thigh muscle to really push all the way through the foot and into the floor. As we do so our hands are coming up and we are pushing the waters, as if we’re pushing against an invisible wall next to us. Pushing, so we can engage our arm muscles, our core and the leg pushing into the floor and then we’re bringing it back to centre. We’re doing that all on the left hand side. So peeling this left foot off, heel, toe down and transfer your weight into it as you push against that wall, bringing those waters back to the centre. Heel, toe right, push. Heel, toe left, push. And again. Following the hands, focusing on that energy. Really using that natural resistance like we’re pushing and pulling our hands all the way through that water.
EXERCISE 5
Final exercise is called Clasping the Hands and Pushing Forward. Couple of different options for you to try here. The first is to clasp the hands, bringing them up to chest height, turning them over and pushing them forward. Now as you can see there’s quite an extension here, quite a stretch in my wrist joint. If you find that a bit challenging, difficult or it’s just not within your range of motion you can do exactly the same exercise but keeping the hands apart, means when that you push forward you can decide how much you stretch that wrist joint out so it can be a lot gentler for you. And we’re going to bring our hands down. So we’re clasping our hands, inhaling as we are lifting the hands to the chest and turning them over and pushing forwards. Now this time you can increase that stretch so it goes into the shoulders and upper body just by dropping your head in between your arms. Then we’re going to release that stretch and lower the hands. Going again, clasping the hands, bringing them up, turning them over, pushing forwards. Extending that stretch, releasing the stretch and taking them down. Pushing forwards, nice exhale on that push. Let’s do one more.
FINISH
And bringing the arms round, gathering that energy, holding it here, breathing in and breathing out. And again, nice big breath in and out. And final inhale, feeling relaxed.