After practicing the basic three-stage chi-gung set given in chapter 1 daily for three to six months, you may start adding some variety to your daily routine by selecting a few additional forms from this chapter and integrating them into your daily practice set. If you are a beginner, it is best to gain proficiency in the basic sets from chapter 1 first and to develop the habit of daily practice before learning new forms. You’ll probably find a few here that prove particularly beneficial to your personal requirements.
Don’t try to include every new form you learn from this chapter in your daily regimen. Instead, pick a few that you like and substitute them for a few in your current set. The overall number of forms included in the basic three-stage set is about normal in this system of daily practice and takes about an hour to practice properly. On days when you have only twenty or thirty minutes to spend on practice, you should take out a few forms and practice an abbreviated set—but always use the three-stage format of warm-up, main, and cool-down. It’s much better to spend five minutes doing one form well than to try rushing through three forms in five minutes. So if you only have twenty minutes, do a few warm-up movements, then spend the rest of your limited time practicing only two or three main forms, and finish with some basic cool-down maneuvers.
You should firmly establish the habit of daily practice by doing all the forms in chapter 1 every morning for three to six months. After that, it’s no longer necessary to practice exactly the same set of forms for exactly the same amount of time each and every day. The most important thing is to practice daily and to practice each form you select properly without rushing through any of them. Whatever combination you choose to practice on a particular day, you should always include the following basic forms:
All the other moving forms within each stage may be shuffled like a deck of cards and practiced in various combinations until you find the basic sequence that suits your system best. You can vary the content of your daily set by selectively including and excluding particular forms according to the shifting variables of time and circumstance.