I. Love. It.

I haven’t always loved seated T’ai Chi Chih. Even though my second signature teacher Eileen Butler (who’s opinion I typically trust explicitly) told me long ago she often starts students in the chair and progresses to standing, I still paid almost no attention to the seated practice. (For the first few years of my own TCC journey I thought of the seated practice as “TCC Light.”)

All that changed three years ago when I struggled for a whole summer with a painful condition on three toes of my right foot. That’s when I “got religion” (as my Southern Baptist mother used to say) about the real value of the seated practice. These days, just like Eileen advised many moons ago, I often start my new students in the chair and progress them to standing (regardless of their mobility).

Here’s why:

• One need not have a mobility issue to be unable to walk. My foot problem is a great example of that. Another time my best friend slipped off the wet bottom stair on her way out the backdoor and broke her ankle. Lower extremity injuries just happen (often with no warning).

• It’s helpful for teachers to know how to teach seated and standing students at the same time. Teaching all students the seated form (and doing it that way from time to time) enables you to be more flexible and responsive to students on any given day. (In the end it just makes you a better teacher, right?) 

• But most importantly, doing the movements from a chair gives the greenest students more information about the tan t’ien more quickly than anything else.

• I’ve also noticed it’s easier for students to connect their arm gestures in all the movements with their tan t’ien when seated which is so important. (Wouldn’t it be fun if we never had to coach folks to not let their arms do their own thing during the Daughter on the Mountaintop and Daughter in the Valley?!)

• Although seated TCC eliminates the legs from the picture, it also provides valuable information about the legs, which is useful later in the standing practice.

I especially value teaching my Veteran-students the seated form from the get-go. It seems more appropriate than when working with the Gen-Z population. Many are referred to me by the VA specifically because of mobility issues. And for the last two-plus years, TCC has consistently proven itself as an almost universally healing modality for these folks. But since I developed a deep appreciation of the seated practice myself, I sometimes do it just for fun. Remember the subtitle of our amazing practice is Joy Through Movement.