Hibernating Bear Tai Chi
Moving Gracefully with your Baseline
'Hibernating Bear' centres around instructor Nicola's ethos to make traditional Tai Chi and Qigong available to students of all abilities. Dynamic slow movements and breath work designed for those who wish to be active in their health care management. For those living with chronic health, degenerative health and different base lines than the norm. Instructor Nicola has distilled her studies and practice of the Classical Chinese arts over the last 17 years, to pass on the most effective methods for improving health and wellbeing.
A bear knows instinctively when to rest and rejuvenate, and when the winter is over he knows when it is time to be active again. It is all about balance, following the natural ebb and flow in life and responding to changes with grace. Instructor Nicola follows the modern Taoist principles as guided by her teacher Casey Kochmer of www.personaltao.com, those being kindness, modesty and non-judgement. Her lessons follow these principles, where she helps students improve their quality of life through movement and stillness, with compassion and validation of you as a unique individual.
Nicola has a well honed friendly and approachable teaching style, and is able to adapt her teachings to suit, often knowing instinctively what will be of benefit, no matter of her lesson plan! She is a great communicator, imparting her knowledge clearly and effectively.
Our Hibernating Bear classes
What makes up a Hibernating Bear Tai Chi lesson?
- How to exercise and manage your individual physical and health baseline with grace
- Gentle loosening exercises to warm the body
- Relaxing deep breathing and soft movement techniques to calm the mind
- Standing, sitting and lying down stillness and meditation practice
- Find out what qi gong means
- Qigong movements
- Chen style Tai Chi exercises
- Acceptance through the absence of resistance, the meaning of true physical relaxation
- The automatic stress and relaxation response
- How to breath correctly for all round health and wellbeing (diaphragmatic breathing)
- Movements that encourage joint rotation, expansion and compression
- Muscle and soft tissue flexibility, strength, unity and elasticity
- Physical symmetry, posture and alignment in class and daily life
- The importance of body awareness
- Balance, stability and grounding
- Detoxing through movement
- Reduce stress and mental tension
- Exercising and management of chronic fatigue
- Tools to aid anxiety and depression
- The mind and body connection
- Movement and stillness for chronic pain management
- Reframing and lessening the pain experience
- Compassion training
- Learn how to progressively to build up to a regular exercise practice and the importance of frequency
- The importance of not pushing passed your body's tolerance, to avoid extremes and train moderately at 70-80% (ebb and flow)
N.B. This is not tuition where you will learn a Tai Chi routine or a qigong set. The focus is on Tai Chi movements, drills and exercises for health and wellbeing. Especially correcting and maintaining physical alignment, with deep muscular / soft tissue /joint movements and diaphragmatic breathing.
Instructor Nicola’s Experience
Your teacher, Nicola lives with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, a chronic degenerative condition. Her experience of chronic pain, chronic fatigue and physical restriction has given her a unique insight into training and teaching Tai Chi and Qigong movement arts. She has trained the practices personally since 2006 and has worked with the ebb and flow of chronic health since then. She has trained many students with a differing base line than the norm, both in private tuition in the home, through her live online classes.
- Parkinsons disease
- Cancer (pre, post op, recovery and terminal)
- Ehlers Danlos syndrome
- Hypermobility joint syndrome
- Fibromyalgia
- Chronic fatigue syndrome
- Arthritis
- Psoriatic arthritis
- Rheumatoid arthritis
- Osteoporosis
- High/low blood pressure
- Scoliosis
- Lupus
- Asthma
- Respiratory disease
- Recovery from spinal injury
- Recovery from stroke
- Recovery from brain injury
- Recovery from sports injury e.g. torn muscles, hernia, rotator cuff injury
- Depression, stress and anxiety
- Recovery from heart failure
- Fall prevention / balance
- Senior citizens and the elderly up to 96 years old
- Chronic and acute pain
- Seasonal affective disorder
- Dementia and Alzheimers
- Learning difficulties, autism and Asperger
- Including care givers