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.
