T’ai Chi Chih for Children

T’ai Chi Chih has infinite benefits for children. Besides developing a greater sense of body awareness, children develop an understanding of the external forces which affect motion. By performing controlled, efficient movements, children also develop understanding of how their bodies move and the effects of energy, gravity, friction, balance, and the laws of motion.

T’ai Chi Chih movements familiarize children with precision and refined balance. The movements also give them as much pleasure and feeling of accomplishment as the popular running games or tumbling.

Abraham Maslow spoke of Humanistic Education as “a search for ways to bring student humaners to fuller realization, to awaken and develop all their sensitivity, creativity and awareness.” Confluent Movement Education (CME) is the development of a person’s total potential in and through movement. Movement Education is broken into three learning domains:

Psychomotor—doing, physical movement

Cognitive—thinking, ability to reason

Affective—feeling, emotions

Traditional physical education programs challenged the student only in the psychomotor domain. Unfortunately they also created an intimidating, restricting, uncreative, and routine environment. The movement experience was devoid of any connection to the thinking and feeling domains.

It is especially fitting that T’ai Chi Chih be taught in CME classes as it allows for personal expression within a disciplined form. TCC is a whole person experience. It develops the three domains in and through simple movement. Children love to learn movements that they can think about, can feel the imagery of, and can coordinate their muscles to do. Slow movements are just as important to learn as spontaneous, quick, reactionary movements. Slow movements demand concentrated effort as well as refined coordination of individual motions. Perhaps it is even more important to teach children finer motions and concentration, as it will teach the grace of moving delicately in confined or crowded spaces.

It is also a fascinating idea that by rocking to and fro, shifting our weight sideways, we are stimulating the corpus callosum—a wide band of connecting tissue that joins the cerebral hemispheres at the base of the longitudinal fissure. The connection between right and left, the reason and intuition, analytical and creative brain lobes, the corpus callosum is also called the “joy center” of the brain. T’ai Chi Chih is a wonderful way of stimulating the joyous child.

I have found in my work with children that they absolutely love expression through movement. Children have much to teach us through movement; my sense is that they know this. There is nothing more incredible than watching a child become her/his own best friend, expressing limitlessness. I have witnessed very fine concentration as well as excitement for TCC in children. It has never been, “Ohhh, how to get them to listen and keep quiet.” Instead, my experience has been of group respect for our time to work on slow, soft and tiny movements, as well as huge, explosive fast ones. The children know it’s their hour to move.

One word of advice: when the children first enter the dance room or gym, they know it is their space, their time, and their place to move. Let the initial excitement at the beginning of class have its place. I always have the children move freely through space for about 3 minutes. (Fast, loud, Karate chopping, leaping, rolling, craziness.)

Then…everyone’s ready. Next use a fun game for roll call and to introduce the lesson plan. Like A-M are moonwalkers (weightless), N-Z are waterswimmers. This sets the mood for T’ai Chi Chih and catches their curiosity. One rule of CME classes, which deserves attention as it is pertinent to TCC, is “RESPECT FOR OTHERS’ SPACE”. Moving freely through space has no physical contact with others, unless a specific game or task is introduced.

In CME classes the lesson plan is created to “stoke” the child in the psychomotor, cognitive and affective domains. Children greatly respect being acknowledged as moving, thinking and feeling beings, as do adults. In any class situation, each person will be in a different “place” internally. TCC is a form of movement which allows each of us a personal expression for our present need.

TCC creates a learning environment that is fun and challenging, and maintains a child’s attention. It is not baby talk, disneyland characters, or “lowering” your adult mentality to teach children. The challenge is that they are invited to experience movement on many levels—as a whole child.

I invite you, as teachers of “Big Kids”, to read through the following lesson plan and see if your T’ai Chi Chih child comes out. Perhaps you may even use parts of the lesson plan for a very lively presentation to your local PTA meetings. Teaching children has brought out a very special light and playful quality in my work with adults. I call it the Pooh Teaching Theory. It’s a lot of fun. It is especially evident that this theory works in my evening classes after a long day’s work. It seems that my “Big Kids” often want to shake off the day anyway, and that’s what we begin with, a ragdoll shake-it-out. We “Big Kids” are really no different; I believe we all need something light and playful to refresh us. Sometimes I’ve felt that T’ai Chi Chih was inspired to evoke the child in us all.

Confluent Movement Education

Lesson Plan

Unit: Movement

Grade: 4-8

Lesson: T’ai Chi Chih—Joyous Movement

Equipment: Mirror, Balance Beam, Ball, Chalkboard

Objectives:

PSYCHOMOTOR-

-Children will develop greater sense of body awareness.

-Children will master slow, flowing, controlled movement.

-Children will coordinate leg and arm motions.

-Children will learn to relax joints (wrists, ankles, elbows).

-Children will learn to twist at waist.

-Children will demonstrate three TCC steps (rocking on toe-flat-heel, stepping sideways, to and fro, also called “yinning and yanging”).

-Children will demonstrate flowing circular movements.

-Children will coordinate movements with use of objects.

-Children will differentiate between nasal and oral breathing.

-Children will measure the tempo of movement based on a weight shift in their bodies.

-Children will differentiate between Martial Arts (such as Karate) and TCC.

-Children will develop circular motion based on T’ai Chi or Taoist philosophy and on opposites creating energy.

-Children will learn new vocabulary, Chinese as well.

-Children will be exposed to Chinese movement and basic Chinese cosmology.

-Children will learn to define laws of motion, gravity, friction, and balance.

AFFECTIVE-

-Children will sensitize their bodies to suggested imagery to effect flowing, effortless movement.

-Children will express movements with force and flow in unison by observing natural phenomena (Passing Clouds).

-Children will express feelings and sensations experienced during TCC.

Tasks:

-Children will move freely through space.

-Children will be exposed to Chinese cosmology of opposites which create energy (Earth + Sun = Energy, plants…and point out the word CHI in CHIldren, CHInese).

-Children will move freely through space using force.

-Children will move freely through space with strong, hard movements like Karate.

-Children will move freely through space using slow, soft, flowing movements like TCC.

-Children will shake like a ragdoll.

-Children will move as if they are on the moon.

-Children will move slow-motion-in-a-dream.

-Children will demonstrate slow circular arm movements.

-One child will demonstrate round, smooth arm circles.

-Children will do arm circles as if they are swimming through water.

-In a circle we will all do the Rocking Motion.

-In a circle we will all do Bird Flaps Its Wings.

-In a circle we will do arm lifts while feeling like the underside of our arms are heavy, feel gravity.

-In a line we will all do to-and-fro step

-In a line we will all do the Bass Drum.

-In a line we will all do the Bass Drum with our eyes closed.

-In a line we will all do Push Pull.

-Children will learn TCC step to the side.

-Children will carry a ball to the side three steps, three orbits and back three and three (then with imaginary ball).

-Children will do the TCC step sideways on a balance beam.

-Children will stand in TCC stance in front of mirror to notice how wide and low they are, like on a horse.

-Children will do Passing Clouds in rhythm.

-Children will do tall stretch and take three long breaths in through their noses.

-Children will do Joyous Breath with force (make sure everyone blows his or her nose first—hard! This is also a good movement to do earlier in the first circle. The Kleenex can also be incorporated into a soft movement before students blow their noses; after forceful breaths, do one gentle one and sink down).

-Children will gracefully conclude.

-Children will be asked to spread out and pick their favorite movement to do for one minute, then pick a new one.

Game:

“Stillness”

“Stillness” is played like redlight-greenlight. The teacher calls out commands while the children move freely through space, then on the command “Stillness,” everyone must freeze and breathe softly. Here are some nice commands: slow circles, like on the moon, like in a dream, like stuck with taffy, like a snake, like a cat, like you’re in water…

“Carry the Ball relay”

Children all form lines and each one does Carry the Ball, then tags the next, on down the line.

Review:

Review the movements and vocabulary, emphasizing slow, circular, effortless movements which use gentle force versus hard force.

Some questions for review:

-What are opposites?

-Can we have one without the other?

-What is balance?

-What is energy?

-What is concentration?

-When we breathe in Joyous Breath, do we use our mouths?

-What movements did we do where we imagined holding something?

-Where did TCC originally begin? (Country)

-What does Chi mean?

-What other words have Chi in them?

-How does TCC make you feel?

-What does TCC do for our bodies?

-What is gravity?

-How do we say yin and yang? Chih? T’ai Chi Chih?