Tai Chi Exercise #1: Moving Root
The following simple exercise can have a profound effect on your balance and stability in Tai Chi form, pushing hands, self-defense, and daily life.
1. Stand in a Wu Ji (shoulder width, feet parallel) stance with knees slightly bent. Take a deep breath, exhale with an audible sigh, releasing tensions from your muscles and your mind and emotions. Feel a wave of relaxation/release streaming down through your body, your legs, and into the ground. Repeat several times, then simply stand still, feeling your "root" connection below your feet, connecting you to the earth itself. Breath slowly and deeply, keeping your attention on your lower body and your roots that extend into the ground.
2. Slowly begin to move back and forth, shifting the weight to one foot, then the other. Work on maintaining the calm, deep, rooted feeling of the still stance, while you are in motion. Move slowly, like a glacier, with a feeling of stillness maintained even though you are moving. If at any point you feel that you're losing even a small amount of your root connection or inner calm and stillness, stop right there and repeat the sighing/releasing down process with which you began. When you have regained full root, continue moving.
3. Repeat the same process, starting with one foot a half-step ahead of the other, in a short "bow" stance. Continue for a minute or two on one side, then change legs and repeat on the other side. As you move, mentally direct the movement not by shifting the body weight forward and back, but by shifting the root underneath your feet. Remember always to stop and regain depth and calmness by releasing downwards, if you have become distracted or your movement has gotten ahead of your rooting.
You can practice this apparently-simple exercise many times throughout the day. Within a week or less you will notice a change in your Tai Chi form work, as well as in many of the movements of daily life. Pay attention to these new feelings and abilities, as they will form the keys to going further in your own explorations and development in Tai Chi.