This is a follow-on article to the article I posted two years ago with the same title “Tailoring Taiji Classes to Audience.”\u00a0 In this new article, I elaborate more on three types of Taiji students:\u00a0 Those with mobility handicaps, those with memory handicaps, and children.\u00a0 The key concept is how to teach Taiji to each of these groups so that they can keep their interest and concentration, and at the same time what they learn to do in class is beneficial to them.\u00a0 It turns out that a subset of the stretching and Qigong exercises that we usually do as warm up exercises to prepare the students’ bodies and minds to do Taiji are good exercises for these types of students, especially for the mobility-handicapped and memory-handicapped students.\u00a0 The challenge to attract children requires some additional tailoring and creativity.
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Students with a Mobility Handicap:\u00a0 <\/strong>In this section we focus on people who cannot stand for an extensive amount of time, or they cannot walk without help or without a cane, or they are confined to a wheelchair.\u00a0 Therefore, we will focus on exercises in which the student will do while sitting down.\u00a0 Since Taiji is known as moving meditation and requires the practitioner to be moving, the usual Taiji exercises will not be suitable to these mobility-restricted students.\u00a0 But what about the stretching and Qigong exercises that we do as warm up exercises for Taiji?\u00a0 We now discuss several examples of these exercises.<\/p>\n We usually begin our Taiji class with a series of warm up exercises, such as stretching and Qigong [1] exercises.\u00a0 In my classes, often the first one we do is the “wave hands like cloud” exercise in which we rotate our hands in front of our body while breathing in or out.\u00a0 Each hand can be rotating clockwise or counterclockwise, and the two hands can rotate in phase or out of phase, so there are several such exercises. These exercises relax our mind, while exercising our arms and our upper bodies, including rotating our waist, and taking deep, slow breaths.\u00a0 We can do all of these exercises while sitting down.<\/p>\n Another set of warm up exercises to prepare the body and mind to do Taiji exercises are Qigong exercises like the 1,000+ year-old “Eight Silk Brocade” (\u516b\u6bb5\u9326<\/strong>). [2]\u00a0 Six of the eight “Eight Silk Brocade” exercises can be done sitting down.\u00a0 This is especially important because the “Eight Silk Brocade” is among the most popular and most ancient set of Qigong exercises.<\/p>\n Another set of warm up exercises is the Paida Therapy (\u62cd\u6253\u81ea\u6108\u6cd5<\/span><\/strong>), or Patting Exercises, in which we just pat various parts of our body with the flat parts or the fingers of our hands. [3]\u00a0 These patting exercises can strengthen different parts of our body by stimulating blood and Qi [4] flow in the body, and can work from the top of our head to our feet. \u00a0 Most of them can be done while standing up or sitting down, and therefore can be done while sitting in a wheelchair.<\/p>\n Another type of exercises that Taiji practitioners should do is meditation exercises (although many do not).\u00a0 Meditation exercises are another type of Qigong exercises, and can calm and clear up the mind, while at the same time involve deep, slow breathing and develop Qi flow.\u00a0 Meditation exercises can be done while standing up, sitting down, or lying down.\u00a0 So mobility-impaired students can practice sitting down meditation.<\/p>\n These are just examples of various stretching and Qigong exercises that mobility-impaired students can participate.\u00a0 They can do these exercises while sitting down, including in a wheel chair, and they will benefit from doing these exercises, both physically and mentally.\u00a0 These exercises usually serve as warm up exercises for regular Taiji students, but for mobility-restricted students, they serve as the core of the exercises.<\/p>\n Students with a Memory Handicap:\u00a0 <\/strong>In this section we focus on people who may have trouble remembering things, especially a sequence of instructions on the placements and movements of feet and hands while doing a Taiji form set.\u00a0 This includes people who may have a memory health problem or just older people with recall difficulties as a natural consequence of advancing age.\u00a0 Although the exercises we discussed in the previous section for mobility-handicap people also need to follow instructions in doing those exercises, the amount of instructions and the difficulty of the instructions for those exercises are significantly less than the instructions needed to do a normal Taiji form set.\u00a0 Therefore, even if some students cannot remember all the instructions, the instructor can remind the students of the instructions while the students are doing those exercises.\u00a0 Whereas if the instructor does that (i.e., providing all the necessary instructions) while the students are doing a normal Taiji form set, it will take a lot of time and disrupt the flow of doing the Taiji form set. [5]<\/p>\n Therefore, essentially all the stretching and Qigong exercises discussed in the previous section for mobility-handicap people can also be done by memory-handicap people:<\/p>\n There should not be much problem doing these exercises in class, because the instructor can remind them of any needed instructions while the students are doing the exercises.\u00a0 When they try to do these exercises at home, they could run into problems.\u00a0 That is where written instructions should be provided to the students to help to remind them while doing these exercises at home.\u00a0 Also, YouTube videos on most of these exercises can be found in the Internet, or videos made by the instructor can be provided to the students.\u00a0 They can then do these exercises at home while they are watching the video on their TV or computer screen.<\/p>\n Since these memory-handicap people are not mobility restricted, you can also teach them to do simple Taiji form sets, such as the Yang Style Form Set 1 (also called the 10 Forms) or Yang Style Form Set 2 (also called the 16 Forms).\u00a0 Depending on the degree of their memory handicap, doing the Yang Style Form Set 3 (also called the 24 Forms) may require too much memory recall.<\/p>\n Children:<\/strong>\u00a0 In this section, we focus on children, say between 6 and 12 years old (although the discussion can also apply to young teenagers).\u00a0 With children, the issue is somewhat different from the previous two groups of mobility-handicap and memory-handicap people.\u00a0 For children of age 6-12 (and to a lesser extent, their parents [6]), the major issues to attract and retain these students in Taiji classes are:<\/p>\n How to keep children ages 6-12 interested in a Taiji class? \u00a0 The class must be fun.\u00a0 The class must stimulate their curiosity.\u00a0 The class must tie to their life experience or their other activities.\u00a0 Here are some possible methods.<\/p>\n One way of making the Taiji class fun and interesting to these children is to have the children think that doing a Taiji form set is like doing a dance routine.\u00a0 We know from experience that many children are very much interested in learning dance routines.\u00a0 However, for a first course in Taiji, the Taiji form sets must be simple, e.g., like the Yang Style Form Set 1 (10 Forms), or the Yang Style Form Set 2 (16 Forms), or perhaps even simpler form sets that the Taiji instructors may have to create themselves.\u00a0 When creating new form sets, it may be worthwhile to add some movements that involve interactions between two or more students, e.g., using some techniques in the martial applications of Taiji as discussed in the next paragraph.\u00a0 Then while doing the form set, there will be interactions between different students so that the exercise is like a group game, thus generating more interest and fun for the children.<\/p>\n Taiji is both a good health exercise and a good martial art.\u00a0 There are some basic martial art principles of Taiji that can be conveyed even to children and have them practice some simple techniques that illustrate these principles.\u00a0 A basic principle of Taiji is that you do not resist a force head on, but by adding a force in the direction of the opponent’s force, you may cause your opponent to lose balance.\u00a0 Another basic principle of Taiji is that a small force can deflect a much larger force (like the old saying “four ounces can deflect a thousand pounds”).\u00a0 The instructor can choreograph simple movements involving a pair of students that illustrate these principles, and even include such movements into a form set that involve movements for pairs of students.<\/p>\n Most children in this age bracket of 6-12 probably have seen movies like Kung Fu Panda, The Karate Kid, movies by Jackie Chan or Jet Li, Shaolin Soccer, etc.\u00a0 So they already know about Kung Fu and have some interest in learning Kung Fu techniques.\u00a0 Therefore, including some simple martial applications of Taiji to illustrate the basic martial art principles of Taiji will generate more interest in Taiji and at the same time tie their Taiji class to some of their other life experiences, like the movies mentioned earlier.\u00a0 In addition, initiating their interest in the martial arts applications of Taiji may lead to additional interest in learning Chinese or other types of martial arts, whether it is Taiji, Shaolin, Wing-Chun, or some other martial arts.<\/p>\n Since children have short attention spans, the Taiji class must be broken down in short segments of about 10-15 minutes each. This can be accomplished since we have a large list of activities we can choose from, including specific warm up, stretching, and breathing exercises, individual Taiji forms, integrating multiple Taiji forms into a Taiji form set, martial applications of Taiji, exercises to relax the mind, visualization of what we are doing to help retain what we have been learning.<\/p>\n All the above arguments that doing Taiji can generate interest in the children and keep their attention while learning something that is useful to their health and their life should be sufficient to convince their parents that their children are spending their time wisely. In addition, the parents may also notice that their children may be calmer, have longer attention spans, and get along better with others.\u00a0 One friend of mine who teaches Taiji in England told me that the teachers were amazed how much calmer and cooperative of the children who have taken her Taiji classes.<\/p>\n Summary:<\/strong>\u00a0 This article discusses three types of people who normally do not take Taiji classes:\u00a0 mobility-handicapped people, memory-handicapped people, and children of age 6-12.\u00a0 We argue that there are good reasons why each of these three types of people should be interested in taking Taiji classes.\u00a0 By properly designing the classes, they can fruitfully participate in the classes and get significant benefits from it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1] Qigong exercises are stretching exercises integrated with breathing and meditation.<\/p>\n\n
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