Tai Chi Internal Exercises for Tai Ji Quan Practitioners

So you've learnt your Tai Ji form and you want to get deeper into the mysterious 'Internal'. Inside this book you will find 31 different exercises to help you develop further using your own form as a vehicle for travel into the wilder reaches of T'ai Chi Chuan.
Many of these exercises may be of use to Karate and Wushu students although an understanding of the underlying principles of Tai Chi is assumed. This is not a book for beginners. There are quite enough of those.
If you are reading this you are probably in the process of making a form your own so you can do with it whatever you will. There are many in the martial arts world who disparage form work as a waste of time and effort. Whilst it is true that working with a partner engenders good efficient skills and develops confidence in dealing with another’s aggressive behaviour, the attributes which can be developed in a good pre-arranged series of martial based movements can have long standing benefits. You can’t always practice with a partner every day but you can practice with yourself. You can’t always have access to gym equipment but you can exercise using your own bodyweight. If you do any series of movements slowly you will soon discover how much your balance and relationship to the ground and gravity is unconscious and barely discerned until you trip or stumble. From a martial perspective the more skilled your balance is the better you are able to affect an opponents without compromising your own.If you add to this simple balance exercise the meditational component you have a total mind/body exercise.
The exercises in this book go deeper than basic balance and efficient alignment and are provided to deepen your level of the internal in order to make those discoveries all your own.
It matters not that many may have trod this way before you. For you this is a new and freshly unfolding experience. I’d rather not spoil it for you by telling you what you should discover, I’d rather point you in the general direction and let you wander in delight.
That field after a fresh fall of snow when you take that first ‘crump’ sounding step. It is as fresh as the first time you do it is it not? So I hope that for you Tai Chi Chuan is a lifetimes adventure of first steps. Keep it fresh but keep it real. It is easy to be wrapped in delusion that we are doing Tai Chi when often we are just doing some vague movements or fantasy role play. Make every step of your Tai Ji Quan a step toward enlightened reason. Feel your way, ask questions, verify observation with experience of yourself and others – and enjoy! Play! Laugh! LOVE!
P.s. Yes, I freely use alternate spellings of Tai Chi, Tai Ji, Tai Chi Chuan and Tai Ji Quan. I shall let you speculate why.