Introduction to my Online Courses: Strengthen Your Immune System with Tai Chi and Qi Gong

Another week goes by, Mind-Body students! We are almost done with our introduction to my Udemy tai chi courses.

This week, we have one of my most interesting courses to introduce: Strengthen Your Immune System with Tai Chi and Qi Gong. The immune system is a network of cells, tissues, and organs that work together to defend the body against foreign invaders that can cause infection (from The National Institute of Health website). A compromised immune system can lead to the common cold, the flu, or other chronic health conditions and autoimmune diseases.

Some of the most promising studies of mindfulness and meditation from the past several years have suggested that a regular meditation practice can reduce immune-inhibiting inflammation, strengthen immune system cell defenses, and even slow the process of cell aging.

In this short course, composed of 19 lectures that span an hour of video time, we have packed as many immune-system boosting techniques as we could, while also keeping the length of the course something that you can review in a one hour session each day.

What you’ll learn

• Mind-Body techniques to boost the immune system

• Methods for deep relaxation

• Skills for managing stress, anxiety and mood / depression

• Prevention against sickness and the common cold

• Mindfulness practice to be more productive

• Improved concentration

Are there any course requirements or prerequisites?

• 15 to 30 minutes a day - For all knowledge levels. Beginner and up!

Who this course is for?

• Students of all ages

• Anyone starting or looking for a new job

• Professionals with demanding schedules and deadlines

• Athletes

• Medical Professionals and Care Takers

• Anyone seeking gentle exercises combined with deep breathing and meditation

• Cancer patients and families going through or recovering from treatment

That’s all for this week! Be sure to put this course on Strengthening the Immune System on your wish list this year! Udemy is always having great sales, so be on the lookout for a good price, and don’t miss out!

Until next week, happy stretching, deep breathing, empty your mind, strengthen your energetic system, and evoke your spirit!

Introduction to my Online Courses: Tai Chi for a Focused Mind - Pure and Simple

Welcome back, mind-body students! I hope you all had a happy, healthy holiday last week. Can you believe there are only a few weeks left before 2018 comes to a close? People are going to be preparing their New Years resolutions soon, and we all know how hard it is to stick to your resolutions.

A good way to stay disciplined and support yourself in your New Years resolution is to use one of my courses to guide you and make your learning and practice process easier.

This week, we’re doing an introduction to Tai Chi for a Focused Mind - Pure and Simple. I made this course as a nice middle ground between the long-form Tai Chi course and the 15 minute course. In this course, you will learn much of the same Tai Chi form as you would in the long-form course, but Focused Mind cuts out a lot of the extra stretches and meditations. That extra content might be something that you would find very valuable. But if you just want the distilled Tai Chi form, then the Focused Mind course is the one for you!

This course includes 72 lectures, each 3-5 minutes long. It totals roughly 3 hours of focused Tai Chi and Qi Gong content. There is also supplementary written material in each section.

What are the Requirements?

• An interest in becoming more fit, more flexible and more relaxed

• A small comfortable space in your house, apartment, office where you can learn and practice

• Willingness to invest 15 minutes a day, three days a week, to enjoy life more

What am I going to get from this course?

Do you want to become more focused, flexible, and relaxed? Don't have time for long workouts?

This course in nourishing Tai Chi forms for focusing the mind will show you how to do a Tai Chi routine in a simple, step-by-step proven method. Not one for all the extra philosophy behind the techniques? No worries. This course is purposefully abridged and focuses entirely on the forms.

The course begins with a short introduction to the goals for the course. Immediately after, you'll dive right into learning and practicing the Tai Chi form. At the end, we've included a bonus section of stretches and breathing exercises that will help you take the benefits of the Tai Chi form to the next level.

What is the target audience?

• Anyone interested in becoming stronger, more flexible and in reducing stress

• People with little time or interest in going to the gym and taking classes

• Weekend warriors

• People who travel frequently

That’s all for this week. Come back next week for another intro to another one of my courses!

And as always, happy stretching, deep breathing, empty your mind, strengthen your energetic system, and evoke your spirit!

Introduction to my Online Courses: 15 Minutes Mind-Body Workout for Recharging & Reducing Stress

It’s Black Friday! No doubt, many of you will be running around looking for great deals all day, and won’t have much time to read a blog. That’s okay! I created a mind-body course (and this short blog post!) for exactly this busy lifestyle, whether it is for just the holidays, or someone’s entire schedule!

My 15 Minutes Mind-Body Workout for Recharging & Reducing Stress is not like my other courses, which expect you to master intermediate Tai Chi techniques slowly and over long periods of time. This 15 Minute Mind-Body Workout will synchronize your health, boosting your emotional balance while also keeping you fit and healthy. This course is for anyone and everyone interested in a more holistic workout that includes strength training, stretching, meditations, and relaxations. Once you have it down, you can do the workout in just about 15 minutes a day!

What are the requirements?

• Only a chair!

What am I going to get from this course?

• Relieve Stress

• Sleep Better

• Improve Your Fitness

• Keep Your Schedule Open

• Balance your emotions

• Improve your mental stability

• Engage your inner warrior spirit

What is the target audience?

• Everyone should use this course, especially people short on time!

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That’s all you need to know! I don’t want to take any more of your busy time this holiday, and this Udemy course won’t take too much of your time either. Go get it now while it is on sale! Now is the best time to buy into any of my courses for the cheapest you can get them.

Introduction to my Online Courses: Tai Chi & Chi Kung - Sitting, Standing, & Moving Meditation

Happy to have you back again, mind-body students!

When you think about mind-body health, you probably think about holistic health. Wellness and prevention for all the parts of your being. But just barely touching on each part of your being is not enough. Let’s take meditation as an example.

Meditation is not just one thing, and there are many different ways to practice the many different kinds of meditation that you should be doing. You could take a whole course just about sitting meditation. But then you would be missing out on the unique meditation experience that standing meditations provide. And that isn’t even touching on all the different kinds of moving meditation that there are.

That’s why I made this course! Tai Chi & Chi Kung - Sitting, Standing, & Moving Meditation is a course that gives you experience in the three major forms of meditation. By introducing you to meditations of each type, as well as supporting stretches and tai chi techniques, this course gives you a very well-rounded mind-body toolkit that you can always come back to.

If you are looking for a meditation-focused course, with some supplementary stretches and techniques (such as lying down relaxations!), then this the course for you!

In this course, you will:

• Focus on inner and outer visualizations, honing your ability to clear your mind

• Engage in easy strength exercises to increase your body awareness and fitness

• Practice distilled movements from the ancient arts of Tai Chi and Chi Kung

• Strengthen the connection between your body and your mind

• Experience more effective relaxation techniques to heal and rejuvenate faster

• Train more with each meditation using guided and timed bonus videos

• Improve your physical and mental quality of life

• Establish a meditation routine that you can use forever

• And much more!

What are the requirements?

• A desire to learn

• A quiet area

What am I going to get from this course?

• Increase your focus

• Reduce any physical, emotional & mental stress you may have

• Strengthen your decision making

• Strengthen your abilities to make well reasoned judgements

• Increase oxygen & energy to your brain

• Increase your productivity

• Boost your immune system

• Dissolve traumas that are stored at a physical level

• Learn to control the fluctuation of your brain waves

What is the target audience?

• Adults, teens or anyone who would like to achieve their goals

• Anyone who can invest a short time each day and would like to reduce stress

• Anyone who can invest a short time each day to become happier and more content

• Anyone who can invest a short time each day to become calmer and more fulfilled

Don’t forget that I have seven other courses hosted on Udemy, which all help to address different conditions or mind-body goals. If this isn’t the course for you, check out my others! I am sure there is one that will fit your mind-body needs!

As always, happy stretching, deep breathing, empty your mind, strengthen your energetic system, and evoke your spirit!

Leg Workout for Health and Martial Arts: Part 6

Good to have you reading the blog again, mind-body students!

This will be Part 6 of our leg workout series, the previous installments of which you can find here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

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Our stretch for this workout is a quad stretch called the “heron” stretch. This was one of the very first videos I posted on the blog! Stretching the quads is incredibly important for improving mobility and performance, in both your daily life as well as sports and martial arts. In the video, I show you how to do the stretch with a chair and a wall, or on the floor in “seza”, a sitting position.

Sit for 2-3 minutes at first, and then see if you can stretch comfortably for 4-5 minutes.

Next, we have “kick-backs", which is a great way to further stretch the quads and increase flexibility, but with a little more intensity than the heron stretch. You can get a good cardio exercise going as you practice this technique by doing it while running. See if you can do 15, 30, or 50 kick-backs on each leg.

And finally, we have the dissolving relaxation for this week’s finale. This exercise, which I show here on two blocks, is a follow-up to the light and heavy forces, and the grounding and rooting technique. After you are in an aligned and comfortable position, you focus on scanning the various “plateaus” of your body. When you reach a place of negative sensation or energy in your body, you dissolve it by using the metaphor or meditative mantra “Sold to liquid, liquid to gas.”

I have spent very long periods of time doing this meditation, and you should try to build up to 15, 30, or even 45 minutes if you really want to explore the depths of this technique. But to start off, just try to scan the whole body in 5 or 10 minutes.

Happy stretching, deep breathing, empty your mind, strengthen your energetic system, and evoke your spirit!

Leg Workout for Health and Martial Arts: Part 3

The summer has come and gone, but the blog keeps going! Welcome back mind-body students! I hope our US-based readers all had an excellent holiday weekend.

We continue with Part 3 of our leg workout series this week! For previous installments, see here: Part 1, Part 2.

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Leg Workout for Health and Martial Arts, #3

This week, it is all about the feet! Feet are more important to the function of the legs than just about any body part, because they are the first part of us that transfers energy from the ground and through our body, and the part of us that lets us transfer energy from our body into the ground. Our stretch for this week is a standing foot and calf stretch using a special tool. You can get these for cheap online, or you can use the lowest step in your house, or do this with your foot up against a wall instead. Your choice! This stretch is one of my 12 Body Markers, and it has an exact angle of flexibility that you will see in the video.

The mind-body exercise this week is simple, but not easy! We will be standing on one leg to improve our stability and balance. This is such a great exercise, because it requires that you not only engage all the tiny and powerful muscles in the feet, but also all of the leg muscles, and the core muscles. It even forces you to focus your mind and "capture the monkey", or you will lose your balance! Doing this for 1 minute on each side means you are in good shape!

Lastly, our meditation this week is actually whatever breathing technique you would like to use, but you will be doing it while you are taking a foot bath for health! As you sit and enjoy the relaxing foot soak, you can practice your deep breathing and achieve a very high level of mental stillness, "thoughts of no thoughts." Sit until the water has cooled off, and then you can practice some self-massage of the feet, or (if you are very lucky) you can have someone else massage your feet for you!

But because I want you to also work your mind this week, I am challenging you to go watch people walk this weekend, and see if you can spot things like incorrect alignment, flat feet, toes pointing outward, and so on. There are a million different ways that people walk without correct alignment. Looking at how other people walk is a good way to learn correct alignment for yourself.

That's all for this week, come back next week for more!

As always, happy stretching, deep breathing, empty your mind, strengthen your energetic system, and evoke your spirit!