Taijiquan Makes You Smarter

Below is an excerpt from a post that appeared at Thoughts on Tai Chi on how the practice of

Taijiquan makes you smarter.The full post may be read here. Enjoy.

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Anyway, here are three great ways Tai Chi will make you smarter (as long as you don’t quit of course.):

• Tai Chi teaches you to challenge yourself
• Tai Chi philosophy teaches you to question reality
• Tai Chi is the right way to train your brain and nervous system

– What? How could that make me smarter?
– Duh! You haven’t even let me explain yet. Don’t be so impatient. Being impatient is not smart. So let me dig into it:

1. Tai Chi teaches you to challenge yourself

Tai Chi will challenge you and continue to challenge you in many different ways. When you start practicing Tai Chi, the exercises might seem so simple. But you’ll find out how hard it is, and while trying to coordinate your body, you will realize how clumsy you are. (I will let you know a secret: Sometimes I have a very hard time holding myself from not bursting into a big laughter when I teach a Tai Chi form to a beginner.)

Yes, Tai Chi will challenge you and your own self-image in many different ways. And it will continue to do so as long as you continue to practice. You will always find more mistakes, more deep-rooted problems (like what you can read about in this article). But challenging yourself will also make you humble, less arrogant and more open for other people’s views and different ways of looking at the World.

This means that you will become more open to other people’s views, and probably also more interested in what other people think. If you don’t understand that this is a kind of intelligence, I am sorry, but then I have not much hope for you. This is a kind of intelligence, an emotional type of intelligence you will gain, an intelligence and the ability to more clearly reflect yourself in others, and to better understand others by reflecting them through yourself.

Oh, and by the way, one of my teachers, a doctor in psychology said that he believed that if you understand Tai Chi you cannot be arrogant. If a “Tai Chi Master” is arrogant, he does not understand Tai Chi. Well, I agree. So you should run away from any Tai Chi teacher you find arrogant. You will thank me later if you follow my advice.