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Some modern teachers have simplified the long tai chi fighting forms down into simple stress-relief exercises that are also very nice. These simple "tai chi for health" forms are a bit closer to the origins of all martial tai chi chuan, which arose from what is known as "medical chi kung" (qigong). Think of chi Kung as the Mother of Tai Chi Chuan. Chi kung goes back at least 3000 years in recorded history, while the term "tai chi chuan" is only 800 years old. Chi kung was originally called "yang sheng" or "nourishing life", and probably goes back tens of thousands of years into pre-history. All tai chi is really just a modern application of ancient chi kung principles.
Chi kung activates your chi circulation in certain energy channels. I also teach China's most ancient shamanic forms of medical chi kung such as the Five Animals Play and Six Healing Sounds in my Chi Kung Fundamentals #1 audio-video course. This awakens the vital organ spirits in the body. Chi Kung Fundamentals #2 teaches you to Open Chi Flow in the Orbit, the most famous Taoist meditation for harmonizing yin-yang chi flow.
Chi Kung Fundamentals #3 is to open belly power (dantian) with Internal Chi Breathing and #4 opens your inner skeletal structure with Internal Bone Breathing and Rooting. Other chi kung forms are customized to build your kidney chi with Sexual Vitality Chi Kung. Deep Healing Chi Kung is a long form of medical chi kung mixed with internal alchemy for people with deep physical, emotional, and spiritual illness. I often recommend it to people with chronic or terminal illness (like cancer) in conjunction with the Tai Chi for Enlightenment.
Most of the medical chi kung practices I teach are short (five movements), easy to learn, and produce a very sweet chi flow. They are short because repetition is more important than variety to stimulate a particular effect, and I've found modern people will actually practice them if they are short.
Medical chi kung gives faster results for self-healing and building chi flow than martial tai chi forms, long or short. If you are only interested in improving your health, it is more effective to practice medical chi kung than simplified tai chi because the tai chi movements are originally designed for fighting. Both of them circulate your chi, but the direction of circulation for fighting is often not the best for healing.
Again, neither medical chi kung nor the recently re-invented "health tai chi" promises nor do they deliver the deep centering combined with expanded awareness that is characteristic of enlightenment. But they are a good preparation for Tai Chi Enlightenment. They deepen its effect by helping to stabilize chi and spirit functions in the body.
I teach other spiritual chi kung forms (known as "nei kung") such as Gods Playing in the Cauldron of Original Chi. This is more powerful when accompanied by the internal mind training of the Inner Sexual Alchemy (Lesser Water and Fire).
As a stand alone practice I still recommend Tai Chi for Enlightenment. It is simply the best, most balanced, most all inclusive, and most profound form yet created, and can be performed by anyone, at any level of skill, with powerful results.
To summarize, neither the long tai chi chuan fighting forms nor the shorter tai chi-chi kung health forms activate the Enlightenment process. In addition to the reasons cited above, it is also because most tai chi forms are based on cultivating earth chi. If you want to explore your soul's higher potential in life, and experience a feeing of unified energy quickly, buy the Tai Chi for Enlightenment video. It cultivates both earth chi, heaven chi, and human heart chi. It immediately activates your Energy Body and begins the process of awakening your Original Spirit. I assure you, if you buy it you will never regret it.
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