As I write this it is getting late. It’s been a very busy month, with lots of wonderful moments along with a lot of work. It’s been an atypical month, which means an atypical schedule. That has me thinking about the timing of Tai Chi practice.

Tradition says you should be an early riser, wake up early, practice Tai Chi before doing anything else, go through your day, then practice again just before going to bed. And for about a third of the population, the early risers (‘early birds’), that can be a great pattern. But to know if it’s a good model for you, you need to know your chronotype¹. You are born with your chronotype, the expression of your circadian rhythm which determines your natural ‘awake/asleep clock’. Your circadian rhythm greatly affects when you get sleepy & can fall asleep and when you naturally wake up. You can ‘bend’ your schedule (to some disadvantage) only a certain amount before it has a significant impact on your sleep duration & quality, which impacts your health.

The traditional approach works well for early risers who are in bed well before midnight and naturally wake up early, sometime around five or six. You might instead be a ‘mid-bird’ who naturally stays up later and gets up around seven or eight. Depending on things like work schedule, a ‘mid-bird’ may or may not find the traditional daily practice pattern a good fit. If you have a life schedule that requires you to get up earlier than your natural sleep cycle, the traditional schedule becomes problematic, even if you try to shift it to later in the morning. The challenges of the traditional approach are perhaps worst for those who are ‘night owls’, individuals who would be best off staying up until one or two in the morning and getting up around nine or ten.

Your circadian rhythm and your life/work schedule greatly affect your best times to practice. For myself, I’m a night owl. I’ve adjusted my sleep to align with the demands of my life as well as I can while still getting a healthy amount of quality sleep, but it affects when I practice. When I get up in the morning, it is close to when I need to face the world. So there is not really time for Tai Chi practice right after waking. I can’t “fix this” by “just going to bed earlier”. Doing so leaves me lying in bed unable to fall asleep, which actually prolongs the process, reducing both the quantity and quality of my sleep. Instead I have adjusted my practice to most often occur at other times of the day. I don’t limit when I practice, and on the rare occasion when I wake up early or have time in the morning I take the opportunity to practice first thing. But that is not a regular event.

I often have a chance sometime during the morning or afternoon to get in some good practice. And I frequently teach in the early evenings, which is both practice and a chance to share Tai Chi with others. But for myself it is in the evenings, sometimes the late evenings, where I often experience the most rewarding practice, investing more deeply and discovering new things.

This is not a recommendation for you to adopt my practice patterns. You need to understand your chronotype and your schedule, then work within them to discover your optimal pattern of practice. Your optimal pattern is one that allows you to cultivate and maintain a regular daily practice.

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronotype
† If you have questions about Chinese terms used, you may find About Chinese Terms helpful.