Tai Chi

I teach Tai Chi core principles & mechanics.

Tai Chi is the glue that sticks everything together and fills in the gaps from other martial arts, especially Wing Chun.

Because Wing Chun is a simplified system that focuses on the main things, so Tai Chi is added to smooth it over, plug in its gaps, extend its remit, and generally make it a more cohesive & comprehensive system, without undermining anything important to Wing Chun, because they are still fundamentally very similar artforms.

Tai Chi alone is a comprehensive system, but lacks practical focus and training habits for self defence (in most schools).

So Tai Chi and Wing Chun make a great combination – like Yin & Yang, or Heaven & Earth, or Male & Female – they are each other’s missing link. Many of the top Wing Chun teachers around the world today combine Wing Chun with Tai Chi – there are even many doing this in the UK – this is testament to how well these two styles of Kung Fu complement each other.

What exactly is Tai Chi?

Tai Chi is a coalescence of Kung Fu (martial art) and therapeutic gentle exercise (for extra health benefits).

In this way, Tai Chi resembles Aikido. Both are described as ‘internal’ martial arts, because they emphasise the cultivation of unseen nourishing & vitalising energy flow, called Qì 气 (in Mandarin) or Ki 気 (in Japanese) or Hei 氣 (in Cantonese) or Hi 氣 (in Hakka).

Thanks to its founders’ commitment to focusing on totally balanced and optimally efficient martial arts techniques, Tai Chi is also commonly trained as a means for generally refining proprioceptive skills, and as a gateway towards deeper spiritual understanding through mastery of the physical self. Yoga was traditionally trained for the same end, although they’ve both become very commercialised lately, and have largely but not entirely lost touch with their spiritual roots.

Many people claim they are doing Tai Chi while interested only in a bit of exercise. Some people do it primarily or equally for combative skill, but this is rarer. So many Tai Chi teachers don’t learn the combative side – some are disinterested in it, and others can’t find good tuition for it.

From the original perspective, Tai Chi is all about practising the most powerful expression of your body. This is rooted in relaxation & balance (Wú Jí 無極 – the source of energy), but goes one step further – it is the disciplined exertion of energy, through your undistracted, sensitive, ever-ready body, towards a target or through a focal point, in the most efficient & effective, and balanced yet powerful way possible, with the help of wholesome breathing, good skeletal alignment, and the best mix of tension & relaxation in certain muscles according to what move you’re doing.

Tai Chi (Tài Jí 太極) etymologically means Great Ridgepole, which may refer to holding up our structure from our crown, like a ridgepole holds up a building’s roof. Or the ridgepole may be our vertical axis – it may refer to straightening the line through our spine up to our crown, roughly along the Dū Mài 督脉 meridian (if we walked on all fours like other animals, this would literally be our skeleton’s horizontal ridgepole). A taut vertical axis is a key part of good Tai Chi posture. In modern context, the Ridgepole (Jí 極) character is also symbolic of any Peak (Tai Chi is the peak expression of energy through a balanced state) or anything Extensive (Tai Chi is about extending energy through our body, to a target).

What’s the main purpose of Tai Chi?

For me, even as a Self Defence enthusiast, the primary benefit of practising Tai Chi is not the acquisition of classical Tai Ji Quan techniques, although that is still a strong benefit if you can find a good teacher very familiar with Tai Chi’s combative applications.

For me, the real main benefit of doing Tai Chi, is its holistic mental, physical & spiritual emancipation – not dissimilar to the main benefit of Yoga, or Dance.

Being able to really feel ourselves – to know ourselves and to control ourselves – without mental, physical or spiritual barriers getting in the way.

If we agree

If like me, you believe this is the main benefit of Tai Chi, then I propose to you, that it should be done in a way conducive to openmindedness, creativity and exploration – not strictly following the rote procedures of a teacher irrespective of how we feel in our own body at the time – instead, just taking inspiration from what our teachers do and why, while prioritising feeling what our own body needs and taking ownership of deciding how best to remedy this.

The common problem

I believe synchronised stretching & breathing exercises, for example, are anti-sensitivity. They’re anti-creativity. They’re anti-initiative. They’re anti-responsibility. They’re mind-numbing and mind-narrowing. They create physical conflict, tension & agitation. They’re spiritually stressing and pacifying. They’re mentally, physically and spiritually unhealthy, and are unconducive to spiritual emancipation. As such, this is the complete opposite of what we should be doing, considering our stated primary reason for doing Tai Chi.

If we still agree

Now I invite you to either find a flaw in my chain of thought here, or revise your stated reason for doing Tai Chi, or agree with me that most people are training inappropriately and consider my alternative training blueprint.

Key training methods I recommend

• Warming up – teacher warms up in a way that suits them, and explains why they are doing each thing they’re doing – invites students to warm up at their own pace, in their own way, however they feel they need to, taking inspiration from the teacher’s ideas, but trying to feel their own body’s immediate needs rather than strictly copying the teacher whose own warmup routine even varies between sessions (just like shadowboxing does). Plenty of self-massage and stretching. Introducing accupressure and qigong concepts. This is also the basis for becoming familiar with different methods of movement – warming up from smaller movements, and eventually incorporating plenty of footwork – potentially covering the full spectrum of tai chi movements without worrying about martial arts concepts yet.
• Push Hands pairwork drills & exercises for maximum biofeedback whenever a training partner is available. This is more physical, less spiritual, but is still very spiritually stimulating in ways that solo work is not. These exercises are more holistic and fundamentally beneficial than focusing on learning martial arts techniques, although it’s also the main training method for rapidly improving martial arts ability across the board. Freestyle Tai Chi Push Hands is essentially Light Technical Sparring, which depending on your training goals can be done ultra-light and delicately for maximum safety; or ultra-technical & regimented for intellectual organisation and robust familiarity; or ultra-freely for creativity and intuitively addressing skill gaps; or ultra-quickly for pressure-testing to help prepare you for serious radical combative threats.
• Self Defence concepts – discussing all the options, and what may be appropriate for when, and why.
• Shadowboxing freestyle for creative & responsive solo training, rather than fixed form sequences. This can be more martial and sharp, or more proprioceptive and graceful, or more dance-like and rhythmic, or more of an indefinable fine art, depending on mood and preference.

Online Course Modules

These are some of the first few lessons in Tai Chi that I plan to release on this site in the near future, to help you gain a solid understanding of the core concepts that constitute Tai Chi as a style.

• Dispelling misconceptions and setting expectations.
• Key Principles of the Tai Chi Posture – how to stand and move without over-committing in any direction, inwardly (collapsing) or outwardly (stretching).
• The Wuji-Taiji sentiment. Reserving energy for when it’s needed. Relaxing while staying centred, and switching on how & when you need to.
• Common Tai Chi solo forms – initial moves and key considerations.
• Common Push Hands training exercises, in case you have a training partner. From simple limited drills, to open freestyle play.

Realistic expectations

Let’s dispel some potential misconceptions, and clarify what you can really expect from top level tuition in Tai Chi.

• If you are weak, you will not become strong after a few lessons in Tai Chi.
• If you are slow, you will not become fast after a few lessons in Tai Chi.

Tai Chi builds on your natural ability and your current condition.

It can immediately work on your awareness, your balance, your coordination, your timing, and your self-defence ability. Changes in these attributes may become apparent within weeks or months. Massive changes in these attributes commonly occur after decades of on-point training in Tai Chi.

Training Online vs Offline

As with all physical arts – especially those with a lifelong learning curve: the speed of your development via top training online, will be far less than the speed of your development via top training in person.

Indeed, there is only so much that can be done over the internet. But I will do my best to stretch the possibilities with this website, and I encourage you to try training hands-on in person if ever the opportunity arises.

Due to how beneficial it can be to train in person, I may be able to help you to identify good teachers to train with near you, to boost your rate of progress.