The TuneUp Program

None of us will play standing all of the time so we need to be able to adapt everything that we've learned so far to a sitting posture. We also have to reprogram our nueromuscular system to abandon the bad habits of a lifetime and sit in a way that supports the natural curve of the spine.

This exercise will help you find a new way to sit.

When you feel comfortable with the walk move on to this one. The palm strike illustrates most of the essential principles of tai chi and is also relevant for guitar players. The aim of the technique is to transfer the force generated by pushing into the floor with your leg through the rest of your body to the palm of your hand. Learning this exercise will develop:

Tension in the upper body will cause myofascial pain in the neck, shoulders and arms. This more advanced taiji exercise will help resolve much of that tension:

This is another breathing exercise that you’ll do standing up. We use it in tai chi practice to make fine adjustments to posture. Traditionally it is used to enhance the flow of chi in the upper body, the practitioner allows the chi to flow through the arms and across the chest in a circle. Whether or not we are impressed with these ancient ideas at the end of the day it works and these theories simply explain our experience. We can take another perspective on what is happening.

The postural stability of the horse stance takes away the need for a lot of the upper body adaptations that can affect the neck and shoulders. Combined with an efficient breathing pattern that doesn’t load your secondary respiratory muscles it’ll allow you to lose a lot of the myofascial tension in your upper body.
In horse stance your lower body is stable and it’s easier to bring your breath down into your lower abdomen:

Focused awareness is a term that I use to describe an essential component of the rest of the relaxation program. Martial artists and practiced meditators know it intuitively but they had to learn it too. Essentially it means that you can focus on a particular part of your body and allow it to relax. This is a good exercise to get started: