How yoga can improve your tai chi ...: tai chi instructor Michael Clark explores the unity of two traditional movement practices.

When I left my tai chi teacher in California to move to Asheville, North Carolina, the advice he gave me was completely unexpected. "Take a yoga class," he said.

He explained that my hips were tight and yoga could help loosen them, allowing me to better follow the basic tai chi principle of "turning from the center." So I enrolled in a yoga class, thinking I would get more limber and thus improve my tai chi form. But what I got was much more than that. As I began to explore deeper, I discovered that these two arts, born in India and China, work perfectly together.

Although the way they are taught in the West often resembles simple calisthenics, yoga and tai chi run much deeper. Both are paths towards greater health, serenity, and spiritual growth. Both are moving forms of meditation that combine deep breathing with gentle movement to promote the flow of vital energy throughout the body. Yoga calls this energy prana and has mapped out a network of nadis, or pathways, that the energy follows through the body. Tai chi calls the energy qi (pronounced "chee") and calls the pathways meridians. But whatever you call it, many people have experienced that circulating this energy helps wash the nervous system clean, reduce stress, gain flexibility and balance, and restore serenity to mind, body, and spirit.

Yoga's emphasis on suppleness, like tai chi, embodies the Taoist principle that "the soft overcomes the hard." In fact, Chapter 76 of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching, the classic of Taoist philosophy, could just as well have been written for yoga:

   Men are born soft and supple;
   dead, they are stiff and hard.
   Plants are born tender and pliant;
   dead, they are brittle and dry.

   Thus, whoever is stiff and inflexible
   is a disciple of death.
   Whoever is soft and yielding
   is a disciple of life.

   The hard and stiff will be broken.
   The soft and supple will prevail.

[Translation by Stephen Mitchell, New York: Harper & Row, 1988.]

Practicing yoga can help your tai chi form in many ways. Although you can start learning from books and videotapes, there is no substitute for a qualified teacher who can help tailor a routine to your specific goals. (To locate a teacher, see "Finding a Yoga Class.")

At a basic level, the gentle stretches of yoga help loosen the muscles and open the joints, making it an excellent warm-up before tai chi. A key tai chi principle is to move the body as a single unit, rotating your hips around your central vertical axis. This can be especially difficult in postures that require wide steps that open the hips close to 180 degrees, such as Carry Tiger to the Mountain, Slanting Flying, and Fair Lady Weaving. To make these moves flow more effortlessly, most of us need to get our hips open further. Try yoga postures like Dead Bug Pose or simply lie on your back and alternately hug each knee to your chest, then pull the knee gently to the outside and down a little towards the floor stretch the groin. Breathe several times and relax into the stretch with each exhale.

Tai chi also emphasizes maintaining the "tai chi trunk," in which the spine is straightened by imagining that the crown of the head is suspended by a string from above Yoga postures like Cat Tuck, the various spinal and moving sequences like Cat-Cobra Flow or the Sun Salutation help work out kinks in the spine where tension is stored. If you practice them, you will become better able to keep your spine vertically straight during the tai chi form, while also keeping it loose enough for the qi to rise from the dantien (an energy center two inches below the navel) to the top of the head.

Yoga can also improve your practice of push hands, a two-person exercise in which partners flow together, becoming sensitive to each other's movement, staying rooted to the ground while pushing the other off balance. Before your next push hands encounter, try doing a session of yoga in the morning. Later, flow through your tai chi form. When it comes time to push hands, you may feel your feet are more rooted, your body is looser and less resistant being pushed, and your mind is emptied of distracting thoughts. Because you have become more supple, soft, and yielding, you may be able to withstand more of your partner's pushes and tip his balance more often that usual.

Practically all tai chi players can benefit from the flexibility and opening of the joints that yoga provides. And why not the reverse? Yoga practitioners may find that the continuously flowing sequence of standing postures in tai chi helps improve their practice as well. Why not learn from each other?

Michael Clark (828-252-6851; [e-mail]) is a certified tai chi teacher in Asheville, NC, who has explored qi in China's hospitals, temples and sacred mountains. His recent experience with yoga has led him to join yoga teacher Kelley Wolfe (828-281-4460; [e-mail]) to offer a workshop exploring the complementary arts of yoga and tai chi in Asheville on October 18.

FINDING A YOGA CLASS

Try these resources to find a yoga class near you. If a Class won't fit into your schedule right now, you can start with books and videos available at your local library or bookstore. Be sure to look for a gentle, beginner's routine that emphasizes hip-openers, spinal twists and deep, flowing breathing. Respect your body's limits.

* www.yogaalliance.org has a national directory of certified teachers.

* www.yogafinder.com

* The advertisers and listings in this magazine.

* Your local Yellow Pages.

* Bulletin boards at bookstores, food co-ops and alternative health centers