Simple Exercise for Healthy Hip Joints

When you do Taichi, dance, yoga and other sports, it is important to relax your hip joints.  Most people don't know how to relax them.  We don't pay much attention to our hip joint movement in our daily life.  If you are always tensing your hip joints, they may become stiff.  When you practice Taichi, you can not feel very comfortable as your energy is blocked and cannot flow down to your legs.  When you practice yoga, you cannot fully stretch your legs without relaxing your hip joints.  If your hip joints lose flexibility, you may hurt them.  Also, you may twist your knees, or hurt your back while practicing martial arts.  

Hip joint exercise is one of the basic trainings in Taichi and martial arts.  One is called Kai Kua Gong.  It is very good for maintaining hip joint health, however, not very easy to practice without shifu's professional instruction.   

We can try a few minutes simple exercise in our daily life.
This is another simple exercise you can try while you are sitting on the chair:

1.  Sit on a chair.

2.  keep your spine straight and vertical to the ground.

3.  Hold your arms up in front of your chest as if you are holding a pillow in your arms.  (You may try other arm movements such as Taichi cloud hands)

3.  Turn your body left and right very slowly like an earth rotation.  Imagine your upper body is a globe and your spine is the axis.  Think the axis is pulled upward while turning the body.  

Do not wring your waist like a towel.  Your headand torso (shoulder, waist, and hip) suppose to move together toward the same direction.  If your lower belly and pelvis are not moving,  you may be tensing your leg joints.  Do it VERY SLOWLY.  

This exercise will help improve your Taichi skill (martial arts, hula dance, ballroom dance, or other skills), if you do it properly.

  

How to maintain hip joint health

 According to NIH, osteoarthritis is the most common arthritis among American people.  It is also very common in Japan.  Exercise is one of the best treatments for osteoarthritis,

To prevent hip joints stiffness and pain, we teach simple movements to increase flexibility, reenforce muscles, and help you maintain healthy weight.

1,  Sit on a chair.  You can relax your hip joint in the sitting position.

2.  Keep your back straight and pull your chin down naturally.  
     Do not tense your back, neither round it.

3.  Move your upper body back and forth as you bow.  

4.  Swing your upper body left and right.

5.  Turn your upper body clockwise and counterclockwise.  

To do exercise 3 to 5, do not bend from your waist and make sure your spine is straight.   If your hip joints are relaxed, your upper body can move like a spinning top.   

Wudang Qi gong and Kundalini Yoga trainings have similar exercise.  Their goal is to let spirit out from their body.  In order to do so, they need to relax every joint to get rid of the blockage in the meridians so the energy can go through.   

We recommend this turning body exercise for hip joint health.  It may help build muscles and keep your body in fit.  It helps blood and lymph circulations as you get rid of the stiffness.  Also helps prevent injury while you practice Taichi, hula dance, and other sports. 



We instruct exercises for anti-aging, health, and beauty in Hawaiian Relaxation Qigong and Taichi class