Today I am going to reveal one of the biggest secrets I ever learned, and tell you about the amazing results that took place in my life AFTER implementing it.

But first… a simple truth. For most of my life, I did not know about this secret.

And I didn’t learn it until someone told me about it.

That someone was a Tai Chi master I trained with in China.

One morning, after practicing for 20 minutes, we took a break. And during this break the master said, “Success in Tai Chi is mostly about resting. 70% of how much you improve is about rest, not work.”

I was taken aback. There’s no way this could be true. My whole life was all about “hard work,” and now I was hearing it was more about rest?

No way. Not possible.

Even though I rebelled against what I heard, I mentally pretended I knew nothing and gave this idea a shot to see what would happen.

And the results I got blew me away.

Then I found scientific evidence that backed up what the Tai Chi master told me. Yet, he didn’t learn it by studying science. He learned it from his teacher, who learned it from his teacher, for generations. It was common knowledge in his lineage.

Six weeks later, when I got back to the U.S., I gradually began to play around and test this idea of rest in everything I did.

I would practice something difficult for a short time, then I would take a rest regardless of whether I thought I needed one.

During this rest period I usually sat still or walked around slowly.

No reading, no texting, no scrolling.

Then I got back up and practiced some more.

And while doing so, I noted improvements that weren’t there before taking a rest.

Turns out that when you rest, your brain processes what you were learning or practicing at 10-20X speed. This means that when you rest your body, your brain is still working.

Now here’s the interesting part to all of this. When you’re practicing something, whether it is martial arts or fitness, you can pause in a position, hold it, and appear to be resting.

You can hold this position for three breaths and relax. Then you can move on to the next position and do the same.

After five minutes (or less) of doing this, your body will start to shake and tremble. Just from holding a posture.

And what is going on when your body is shaking and trembling?

It is developing greater internal energy.

It’s developing internal power.

It’s becoming more ALIVE.

Here’s what’s interesting: I had my biggest breakthroughs within a couple days of training for five minutes in a specific posture followed by a five-minute rest, for a minimum of three sets.

In so doing, I gained access to my body in a way that made no sense to me before giving it a whirl.

Despite my initial resistance and flat-out disbelief, this method became a part of my training, and I now use it in every area of my life.

It seems wrong, I know. We’ve been conditioned to believe that rest is bad, that it means we are lazy.

But rest is the way we learn, grow and get stronger the fastest, regardless of what we believe to be the truth.

You can test this out on anything you want – but to get the full experience of how it works, I encourage you to study my Power Postures and Badass Tai Chi courses.

Take it slowly. Practice one little thing, then rest – and be surprised at how this method leads to rapid progress.

Matt Furey