Bruce Frantzis teaching tai chi on the Beach

Tai Chi is considered a low impact exercise, but there are many other low impact exercises such as aerobics, many forms of dancing and walking. So what exactly is the advantage of practicing tai chi over other low impact exercises?

What is the difference between normal, low impact exercises and tai chi? Is tai chi that much better?

Tai Chi – The King of Low Impact Exercises

There are a lot of articles about the benefits of tai chi,but in this post I want consider the main differences of tai chi compared to other low impact exercises. You have a choice on what you can practice so it is helpful to know how it is working and why you may want to practice tai chi rather than do something like take a walk.

Lets look at how tai chi compares:

Tai Chi Brings You Back Into Your Body

The first thing is that with normal, low impact exercises they’re often still very physical. Most low impact exercise have a tendency to work your muscles. Unlike tai chi they also tend to be done faster. The nature of movements in tai chi require the practitioner to operate in slow motion, and slow motion has a tendency to loosen up the body in the way that normal, low impact exercises don’t.

An adjunct to this is because of the degree of attention and concentration required to do tai chi, you must drop your mind into your body. This is not necessary the case with other low impact exercises such as walking where you can walk and at the same time daydream being completely in your head.

Tai chi is a exercise that helps bring you back in your body – something that is needed in our fast paced western world where many people are disconnected from their body.

Tai Chi Gets Your Joints Moving

A second important point is that while you are doing the movements of Tai Chi, the constant shifting weight back and forth between the legs, the constant change in the position, the incredibly wide range of arm movements get every joint in the body to fully articulate.  Most low impact, aerobic exercises do not do that. That’s a special focus of tai chi.

Tai Chi Increases Circulation

A important third point is the way in which Tai Chi movements are done with very even slow motion rhythm. This boosts circulation in a way that goes deep to work with the small, tiny, blood vessels inside the body that most slow, low impact aerobics will do.

Tai Chi Develops Balance

Above and beyond this, doing Tai Chi has a way of developing balance (both inner and outer) because of the way you shift your weight from your forward leg to your back leg and all sorts of different positions and pick one foot off the floor constantly. It develops balance better than the vast majority of low impact exercises do.

For athletes developing better balance and body awareness result in higher performance. On the other spectrum, for seniors and those who are aging, any fall or bone break beyond the initial pain and medical costs, will seriously decrease the mobility and possibly result in chronic pain and a lower quality of life.

Developing better balance is a big thing that can not be overlooked and Tai Chi does it just about as good a job at this than anything I have encountered.

Tai Chi Principles are Unique

Tai chi simply does not follow the same physical principals that normal, low impact exercises do. Tai chi has its own unique principles that are significantly different from the way the western mind thinks about exercise.

I think it’s the slow motion nature of it, I think it’s the circular motion of it and  I think it’s the nature of the way that it makes the body move in such a wide variety of positions and postures and articulations of your arms and your legs.

It is a combination of all these things together that make the benefits of tai chi so compelling and useful.

Is Great the Enemy of Your Good?

Lastly one of the statements that I have made is that Tai Chi has great benefits for people even when it is practiced poorly. After seeing many people do tai chi all I can say is that in general doing it even poorly is better than not doing it.

Now the great thing about tai chi is that just by doing it, no matter how bad or good you get results. This is an important point because I live in America and there is a great desire her to do things only if you can be great – but this reasoning just does not hold for tai chi. My mantra when I encounter this attitude is “Don’t let the great be the enemy of the good.”

So rather than only do it if you can do it perfectly, just do it and understand you are working toward great. You most likely will not reach greatness after taking a week course for a few months or even by attending an intensive seminar. Realistically it takes years and many hours of regular practice to bring any movement form to its full potential. This is also the carrot or the greatness that makes tai chi so appealing, because there is always another level to climb and always ways to deepen your practice.

I hope this post has been useful for you, I hope it encourages you to practice or learn tai chi. Please let me know what you think by leaving a comment below…I read all comments although often just respond to a few…

Hi folks,

We get a lot of comments that come into our office. Many send in their thanks for the work and for our instructors teaching tai chi and qigong. I wanted to share an email we received recently and to again thank my instructors for their commitment to teaching.

I would encourage those thinking about becoming instructors in qigong, tai chi or longevity breathing to go for it. Attending an instructor course can be one of the most powerful things you can do for yourself and to be of service to others. And for those who have certifications but are not yet teaching, just start a small class because even working with a few people can make a huge difference on those peoples lives (plus your own training will improve dramatically when you have to teach others).

Teaching tai chi and other Taoist energy arts provides people with the tools and practices to face the journey of life:

I would like to thank Bruce Frantzis and his senior instructors for dedicating their lives and talents to communities all over the world. I work as a full time volunteer with the Sisters of Charity in the city of Juarez, Mexico, the twin city of El Paso, Texas. Juarez is widely reported to be one of the most dangerous cities in the world due to an escalating drug war, with approximately 3000 people murdered in 2009.

In the wake of such violence schools have been shut down for weeks at a time and businesses have closed creating what many visitors call, “hell on earth”. Overwhelmed as I was with assisting in very basic services to some of the very poorest residents at a community center for families with severely handicapped children, It would have never occurred to me that these people needed a class in Taoist Energy Arts. Food, shelter and medical care seemed to be much more pressing needs. But I’m an outsider and my eyes don’t see the same way as people who live and raise their families in such a place.

One woman, Sofia, a widow and mother of five who lives near the center and does much work for the Sisters, expressed interest in learning Tai Chi to share with the ’stress poisoned’ women of her community, and to our great good fortune an Energy Arts senior instructor, Steve Barowsky, is the only name I found when I looked up Tai Chi in the yellow pages. Sofia has been taking private classes with Steve for many months now (with me translating) and every week we are amazed at the depth of his knowledge and experience and with his ability to convey complex concepts simply and directly.

Sofia is learning Tai Chi, Qigong (Chi Gung), and many basic techniques for working with families and she is dedicated to helping other women find an interior peace that the outside chaos cannot rob them of (not to mention improving their health and well being). Her dream is to be certified to teach by Energy Arts someday and Steve says that she is an excellent student. It is clear to me that enabling Sofia to study with Steve is the most valuable and lasting service I can provide to this ravaged city, and it is a great pleasure to me to see the women learn ways to help themselves and thereby help their families.

Thank you again for this unfolding opportunity…

Many women as well as men suffer from extreme caustic stress. This would be true of the women in Juarez who are having the horrors of one of the most serious drug (shooting) wars that has ever existed. Just as, at this very moment the people in Haiti are incredibly stressed. Besides the physical needs of the body, when the mind, due to incredible external circumstances becomes mentally overwhelmed, very often the pain of those mental disturbances is worse or at least as bad as the lack of food and water etc.

Women in poorer countries very often do not have access to the type of social services and psychological services that we are fortunate to have in the west. Tai chi is something as was shown in China and was shown in your case in Mexico that can reduce those stresses and give women a new lease on life. Difficult situations have to be endured through, this said, if a person’s nervous system and energy and peace of mind become stronger through something like tai chi, it can make an amazing beneficial difference, and you are quite right, Steve is a wonderful teacher and Energy Arts is proud to have him as a member of the family.

Siba, keep up the good work, people who try to make a difference in this world above and beyond their own profit are prizes to be treasured.

Bruce Frantzis

P.S. At some point it one of my hopes is to start a scholarship program to assist people who may not have the funds but have the commitment to learn and teach energy arts…

Tai Chi Master Bruce Frantzis in Seated Meditation

I am responding to a common question that was asked to me about why you would put one hand in front of or on top of the other in qigong or meditation positions where this is required.

First in my personal opinion, for most people its not that strongly important which hand goes on top or on bottom.  Many schools of thought in the qigong world as well as the yoga field say the energetic anatomy of men and women on the left and right channels is different. One way that this is described in a lot of detail is that one side of the body is either the sun or the moon or the male and the female.

In the energetic schools that have this thought, they will then tell the man or woman to put one hand in front of or in back of the other hand based on either the right or left channels of the body. This is a practical matter and I had this discussion with many of the masters I knew. However, after all my explorations I came to understand that until a person is at an advanced stage and is very deliberately working with their left and their right channels it does not matter all that much.

At a very practical level there is one main point that does matter and may influence your choice. This is that most people’s bodies are slightly imbalanced, either the left or right side of their body where in many small areas some will be more or less stretched than the other. The less stretched side could be that way because of genetics, trauma, uneven stretching, or other activities accumulated over daily life.

Usually the side of the body that is dramatically less stretched is the one you want to put on top or in front because it will stretch that side of the body out. Why will this happen? It will happen because the tighter side of the body, by being put in the forward or top position, will naturally stretch it more.

If you are sitting in meditation and have your hands palms facing upwards (to the sky) that means that the less stretched side would be put on bottom. If your palms are facing your tantien the less stretched side would be the hand that is furthest from your body. What this will do is it will slowly cause your body to release so that both the left and right sides of your body will be equal. This will increase the degree of chi flow and motion of your nerves into the side of the body that is naturally compromised.

Beyond that important practical point, when you reach a much more advanced level of qigong and you are deliberately working with the left and right channels of the body, there are various ways that you would place the hands. This has to do with deliberately balancing out and affecting the energies of the left and right channels. To simplify this, most qigong or tai chi masters will say put one hand or the other in front in general, however, the truth of the matter is much more complicated as you can see.

Although a teaching sound-bite may not be false, it is also may not be completely true. Each circumstance may require a different approach to achieve the results your are after.

Budda Dog (Photo by: Superfantastic)

Is the Tai Chi tipping point on the horizon or not?

Everybody who has been involved in tai chi in the West for the past 10-15 years has known that tai chi is probably going to reach a tipping point were it really reaches the masses; where tai chi really becomes known to the public rather than being some strange exercise that hippies practice.

The simple fact still remains most of the public know little of the tremendous benefits of tai chi, how tai chi works or how to learn tai chi. Lets connect Malcolm Gladwell, Swami Vichinanda,Jane Fonda and Bruce Lee with the Tai Chi Tipping Point…

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, he describes the “three rules of epidemics” to determine the conditions for something to go viral. What needs to happen for tai chi to meet these three rules and spread like crazy? And can we learn anything from the popularity of yoga in relation to tai chi?

Tai Chi Compared to Yoga

Yoga had been around in the West for over 115 years where, in contrast, tai chi has been around for less than half that time or about 40 years.

A little known fact is that the West’s awareness of yoga is generally considered to have been brought over by Swami Vichinanda in 1893 at the Parliament of World’s Religions. Yoga’s growth path was unremarkable for most of those years, until about 1980. So what caused yoga to take off in the 1980’s?

Well one reason is that some celebrities started promoting it. One of the foremost was Jane Fonda, who is also considered to have founded the aerobics movement. She is a Hollywood star and clearly one of the sex symbols of her generation. So when she started practicing and promoting yoga many women got on board or more literally on the mat.

It is no great surprise that Yoga exploded in part because of Hollywood publicity as many trends are created there.

The Three Rules of Epidemics

In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell says that there are Three Rules of Epidemics. Here is a short summary of the three rules:

1. “The Law of the Few”—Gladwell states: “The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts.” He goes on to talk about three types of people. Connectors link people up together. These people have massive social networks. Mavens are people who connect us with new information. Finally there are Salespeople who are good at persuading us to try or buy.
2. The Stickiness Factor—Stickiness is related to how a message is remembered and passed on. How much does something become the “topic of the day”?
3. The Power of Context—Context is an important area taking into consideration the environment and conditions that would need to be present for a trend to go viral, such as demographics and value systems.

If we look the promotion of Yoga by Jane Fonda, we could say that she is a connector, a maven and a saleswoman all in one.  In the early 1980’s one of the big new inventions was the VCR, which dramatically helped the trend to become “sticky.” Finally, the population demographics of the baby boomer generation fit the slot where yoga and aerobics would be appealing. So we could say that yoga definitely meet all of Gladwell’s rules.

Who Does Tai Chi in China?

If we look at tai chi in China, 50 percent of all people who practice tai chi are over the age of 50. Tai chi is known for incredibly regenerating people’s bodies—making them healthy—and being one of the best longevity anti-aging programs (see my book Tai Chi: Health for Life).

Tai chi is the only non-impact exercise in the world that has a dramatic track record for reversing the aging process. Nothing else has the track record of tai chi. But still, up until the 1960’s when tai chi came to the United States, tai chi was an odd “thing” out there.

Some think tai chi is just a martial art, which is just not the truth. Others will say tai chi is a dance, and of course that is not the truth either.

What can be said in the current times is that most people associate tai chi with being somewhat good for your health. It is also becoming more well-known that tai chi is also good for all kinds of illnesses, including diabetes, arthritis and fall prevention.

However, what has been missing in the tai chi tipping point equation in terms of context in the West is very simple: The baby boomer generation population in America and Europe is only now starting to reach an age where tai chi has real appeal. When you are in your 20’s and 30’s the idea of a low-impact exercise for longevity just doesn’t have the same attraction as it does for a person as they age . When you’re young, you more typically climb mountains, run long distances and do other higher-impact sports.

The baby boomer population has finished running their marathons, buying houses, tried and given up psychedelics, and gone through the householder stage . They are now just entering a completely new phase whereby health, extending their life and releasing stress is of utmost importance. They want to see their grandkids grow up.

Enter Tai Chi

To some extent, whatever the baby boomer generation decides to do, the entire society follows because they constitute something like 30-40 percent of the population. As a result a lot of money follows the boomers along with marketing and paradigm shifts.

The tai chi community has been saying for about 10 years, maybe even 15 years, “Well, ya know the baby boomers are about 40, 45, and 50.” Well right now we are in the slot because the first wave is coming when they start hitting 60.

Baby boomers will finally be confronted with their own mortality. The earlier vanities of youth will flip into the cold hard realities of getting older. This is when many may jump on board with tai chi. As I have said elsewhere, tai chi really is the foremost preventative healthcare solution on the planet. Here is the demographics in the US from the year 2000.

You can see from the graph the bulge that represents the boomers (note this chart is 10 years old). We’ve now reached the point where the first edge of baby boomers has tweaked over the 60-years-old bracket. The largest segment is just reaching 50, which just happens to be the same age in China when most people start practicing tai chi.

What makes Tai Chi sticky?

So what could create “The Stickiness Factor”? You’d have to be living in a cave not to recognize that for the past 15 years the level of general stress in America and Europe is escalating to the point where even medical associations are saying that it is the greatest cause of disease.

Tai chi is the one exercise that actually focuses on relaxing your nerves; yoga doesn’t even really do that. With the exception of yin or Taoist yoga, most yoga is not taught with releasing the nerves as a primary focus.

Tai chi (and also qigong of which tai chi is a subdivision) systematically trains your nervous system to relax. Tai chi is about relaxation. Relaxation is the opposite of stress and stress is a fancy word for tension. Tai chi is an antidote for tension.

Tai chi’s main selling point is not that you are going to look good, but that you’re actually and truly going to feel better. And it’s not a psychological thing about “everybody loves me.” When you wake up with aches and the pains and stress that kills you, you don’t feel good.

People get hooked on tai chi when they hit the “aha” moment where they realize they have a fewer pains and also can relax the nagging thoughts and stressful events that overwhelm the system.

It can be said that a large number of people who start and continue practicing tai chi get REAL results or they wouldn’t bother with it. Tai chi works. It addresses the biggest issue of our times directly—relaxation to counter the stress. It also doesn’t take five years of practice five hours a day to feel results. You generally feel results rather quickly, especially if you are training with a qualified tai chi teacher.

I might also mention another important aspect that makes tai chi sticky. In most cases tai chi is practiced in groups. This in itself is “sticky” because people like to get together, socialize and practice together. I have seen time and time again long-term bonds and friendships form in tai chi groups. As more and more tai chi groups form, the entire tai chi movement will build.

For tai chi to take off, it will need to be a grassroots trend. I have witnessed it happening in both China and America.

The unblocking move is that people have to realize that they can do tai chi in gym clothes. You don’t have to wear some fancy silk outfit. As tai chi makes it way into gyms and parks the momentum will pick up and it will spread quickly. The last point here is that tai chi does not generally require a massive investments – most tai chi classes are affordable and compared to the cost of healthcare tai chi is a great bargain.

Learning from the Kung Fu Boom

So we have covered “The Stickiness Factor” and also “The Power of Context”- both are in line to have tai chi go viral. But the last piece is Gladwell’s “The Law of the Few” rule which basically answers the question, “Who is going to promote tai chi and bring it to the masses?”

If we go back to the yoga movement what drove the popularity was NOT a bunch of fancy new yoga studios, nor its century-long history. It was the simple fact that famous people promoted it via the media and Hollywood – lots of videos and DVDs were sold. Hollywood integrated it into their culture and sent it directly into your living room.

We can also look to another fitness mega-trend that went over the tipping point in the 1970’s when martial arts, especially kung fu, boomed. Two things in the media and Hollywood ignited the kung fu boom.

The first was the TV series Kung Fu with David Caradine (who wasn’t even a martial artist, but that even didn’t matter). It was the fantasy, the illusion that got people interested. Half of the stuff that he was saying, which people thought was the Shaolin or the Buddhist, was actually straight out of  Tao Te Ching. It came from Taoism.

Interesting the one thing all Taoists have in common is tai chi. The ideas were powerful and they still are today.

The second factor was Bruce Lee coming onto the scene. He did the big movies with the hyper emotions of youth—anger, angst, and all the explosion of those ideas. The kung fu and karate trend exploded everywhere. I won’t comment on the fighting skills but for entertainment check out this clip of Bruce Lee:

So the missing piece is to have a celebrity, TV series or large movie in America that features tai chi in a big way. The tai chi craze will not be the same kind of an emotional explosion as the martial arts trend—one driven by youth. Nor will it be about looking good or stretching.

It’s going to be a different kind trend. It will be more like, “I’ve got to do something about all this stress that is destroying my life from the inside out.” “I want to live longer to see my grandkids grow up and not be in pain.”

Everybody knows this stress and tension exists internally. On a day to day level most know they are hurting, they can’t sleep and their nerves are on the edge. Most people in our culture simply don’t have a way of relaxing in the moment.

The Tai Chi Tipping Point Slot

Real tipping points are usually caused by a real need. We’re in the tai chi tipping point slot now. The only thing that’s missing is the TV show and/or a movie with some celebrity endorsement.

So now it’s a question of the first media channel recognizing the power of tai chi and who will become the poster child for the tai chi mega-trend.

What celebrity out there is willing and ready to take this forward? Who do you think would be the best person to promote tai chi? When do you think this will happen?

All of it is interesting and shall be fun to see unfold…I welcome your comments below.

Going for it! (Photo by: nimish_gogri)

7 Stages of Learning Tai Chi

Having taught tai chi and qigong to more than 15,000 students, I have come to a deep understanding of seven distinct stages that my students have gone through in learning and adopting tai chi into their daily lives.

Stage 1: Starting the Tai Chi Search

Students talk to their friends and health and fitness practitioners. They read tai chi books and tai chi research on the Internet about practices that can help them achieve their goals. They find something that rings true intellectually or emotionally—it seems right, it makes sense or they think it will solve their particular problems. They look for intellectual confirmation to bolster their view. They narrow their choices to a few.

Stage 2: Seeing What Fits

In this stage, people research what tai chi teachers and tai chi classes are available. They may take an introductory tai chi class or weekend seminar and talk with different tai chi students and teachers. They may purchase a tai chi video and try a practice on their own. They find out about the challenges involved and then must make a decision if it is something they want to do.

Stage 3: Committing to a Tai Chi Class

In this stage, people commit to a tai chi class several times a week. External factors matter: the setting of the tai chi class, the personalities of the teacher and other students.

Stage 4: Practicing Tai Chi Outside of Class

There is an ancient phrase that tai chi teachers like to quote: “The teacher leads you to the gate, but only you can pass through.” At some point, students must take tai chi unto themselves and make it their own.

That begins with practice tai chi outside of class. The tai chi teacher will show what the next learning phase is and ask students to practice in order to progress. At first tai chi beginners will feel happy to learn the basic tai chi movements and get better at them. But, the bigger challenge is to learn them well enough to feel their impacts deep inside the body and mind and develop the new inner rhythms that will lead to adopting tai chi as a daily practice.

When students begin to practice tai chi outside of class their practice is often erratic. There is no support from their tai chi teacher or other students when they encounter moments of forgetfulness or awkwardness.

There are also the very real challenges of encountering negative emotions without anyone to provide guidance. In addition, there is the inherent slowness of the process in learning and remembering the tai chi moves and feeling the benefits. The best strategy for success at this stage in learning tai chi is for students to find a consistent time and place to practice—a time that is held apart and becomes routine and inviolable in a place where the tai chi practice cannot be interrupted.

Stage 5: Committing to Tai Chi Mastery

Students have stuck to the tai chi class long enough to learn basic tai chi movements and have developed the practice habits that bring about new internal rhythms. While practicing tai chi, there will be breakthrough moments when new plateaus are reached. In these moments students suddenly feel more agile and alive; their minds and spirits have moments of great clarity and focus; they feel moments of total relaxation combined with a new ability to handle tensions and anxieties. They recapture the sheer joy of learning they once had as children.

Stage 6: Facing Challenges

Chinese energy practices inherently come with inner difficulties to overcome and pass through. Plateaus may be followed by periods where not much seems to happen, the practice seems to be going nowhere and self-sabotage is likely. This is where tai chi students feel their negative karma and the effects of the accumulations of negative emotions.

They may quit just before a new summit is reached and sink back into self-destructive habits. Tai chi brings them increasingly into contact with their ego and the flow of their energy. When they begin contacting that energy, for better or for worse, they will contact areas of their emotions or thinking that may make them feel out of control. When they start traveling in unfamiliar territory they might become uncomfortable and afraid of working through these feelings. They become fearful of what they may encounter and stop practicing tai chi.

One of the warning signs of self-sabotage is disassociation. Students do the tai chi movements on automatic pilot and remain unaware of their effects. They will have to make peace with themselves before they can pass through it and head towards the sublime. With diligence and perseverance students will build a solid tai chi foundation that will effectively and increasingly enable their practice.

Stage 7: Re-inspiration

In the period that follows a plateau or an encounter with a self-destructive habit, students need approach their practice gently and find ways to challenge themseves with small successes so that their tai chi practice inspires them again.

They might try:

• Focusing on relaxing particular body parts as they do the tai chi movements, such as softening their shoulders or relaxing their stomachs.
• Making their tai chi movements more connected and smooth.
• Doing tai chi movements extremely slowly.
• Practicing one tai chi movement over and over.
• Relaxing into one tai chi posture and hold it for a minute or more.

Thinking of ways to continuously re-inspire themselves will keep the tai chi practice fresh and alive. Satisfaction must come from the inside and increasingly this is what the practice of tai chi can provide.

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Tai Chi Secret #5

There are traditionally five levels of credentials and competence for tai chi masters. Contrary to popular belief tai chi does not have black belts or other obvious visible signs of competence. Nevertheless, in China, there is a long-established hierarchy of learning and teaching in tai chi that progresses in five levels.

Level 1—Basic Tai Chi Movements and Body Alignments

Beginning tai chi students study until they are competent in the basic movements and body alignments. The overwhelming majority of China’s active tai chi instructors belong in this category.

Level 2—Intensive Tai Chi Study

Junior tai chi students study regularly for at least five years with a tai chi master and actively practice for at least ten years. Their advancement to the next tai chi level depends on natural talent, hard work and other factors.

Level 3—Study Directly with Master

Senior students take classes with a tai chi master several days a week—if not daily—for at least a decade.

Level 4—Formal Disciple with Specialized Knowledge

Tai Chi Masters are the formal disciples of authentic lineage holders. They receive the deepest and most secretive levels of specialzed knowledge available in tai chi. Tai Chi Masters can be truly exceptional at some but not necessarily all aspects of tai chi.

Level 5—Lineage Holder

In a particular tai chi or school, lineage holders are disciples who over time are chosen and specifically trained in the entire tradition to hold all, not only selected parts, of the tai chi tradition and the knowledge of the previous tai chi  lineage holder.

Although some tai chi masters are beginning to issue teaching credentials to students who have passed instructor trainings, the vast majority of available tai chi teachers lack such credentials much less the competency to offer such credentials.

Consider your Goals

You may have determined that you want to learn tai chi for one or more reasons, which may include:

•           Relaxation and stress reduction

•           Improved health and wellness and longevity

•           Joy of movement, entertainment and socialization

•           Learning a tried and true and challenging body/mind/spirit practice

•           Self-defense

•           Putting more chi energy in your life

•           Spirituality and personal growth.

Perhaps you want to enhance your life or address specific health issues. Tai chi research has shown to have a positive effect on mitigating high blood pressure, pain (physical, emotional and mental), carpal tunnel and other repetitive stress injuries, and helping patients recover from accidents or operations. Perhaps you need a tai chi teacher skilled at teaching the handicapped or the elderly.

You need to tell potential tai chi teachers what you specifically want to achieve and ask if they can help you, rather than assuming that they can. Not all teachers may be able or willing to teach what you need or desire to learn.

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Tai Chi Secret #1

The first tai chi secret is that choosing the appropriate tai chi style for your goals is very important. In fact choosing a tai chi style is one of the most important decisions you’ll make/or don’t make on your journey to learn tai chi. Not ‘consciously’ choosing would be like attending a university and not caring what degree you studied.

For most of the public, tai chi is just one subject, much like a subject area like math or literature. Yet to the more experienced tai chi practioner there are many style of tai chi and choosing the right style is a very important thing to consider before you begin. Now you may luck out and study a style that matches your goals; then again you may not resulting in frustration or even worse injury.

So in this post I am going to review the main styles and go over what tai chi styles are best for different goals and age groups. And don’t worry, even if you already are practicing a certain tai chi style it helps a lot to know the differences because at some point you may also benefit greatly from learning another tai chi style or at least you can be more informed about the specific tai chi style that you are practicing.

Essentially, it should first be pointed out that all tai chi styles have far more in common with each other than they have differences. All tai chi styles improve health, reduce stress and help you move more gracefully. All tai chi styles develop chi and use slow-motion, flowing, circular movements. For most practicioners, they choose a tai chi style based on the quality of the teacher where they live, the convenience of the school and other personal factors. Knowing about the tai chi styles upgrades your tai chi knowledge and guides you to make the right choices in the future.

Tai Chi’s Five Major Styles: Which Style Is Best for You?

Each tai chi style has a different syllabus, structure and flavor as regards how its specific tai chi techniques are applied. All five tai chi styles can potentially give you tai chi’s health benefits.

Four of tai chi’s five major styles—all except the combination tai chi styles—derive their name from the founder’s surname. The Chinese talk about the tai chi of the Yang Family, Wu Family, Chen Family and Hao Family.

Each tai chi style takes a different approach toward the movements of their forms and each tai chi style has many variations or schools. Each tai chi school is composed of practitioners who follow specific leaders or teachers within the tai chi style. Each tai chi school generally emphasizes a specific approach to the art: their tai chi forms may have recognizable stylistic differences, trademark movements or develop specific self-defense training skills. Let’s look that the five major tai chi styles:

The Yang Tai Chi Style

The Yang style is the most popular and widely practiced tai chi style worldwide. In England and America at least 20 main variations of the Yang tai chi style exist and in China there are even more. The various schools originated from the approach of a specific tai chi master or from a particular geographic region within China. Each variation has a distinct flavor, looks different from the others to a greater or lesser degree and may emphasize different technical points. All, however, will be called Yang style tai chi.

The Wu Tai Chi Style

The Wu tai chi style is the second most popular tai chi style. It has three main variations with strong stylistic differences that derived from the founder, Chuan You, his son, Wu Jien Chuan and his grandchildren.

The Wu tai chi style was created directly from the Yang tai chi style and as such is the largest variant of the Yang style. However, unlike most traditions in the Yang tai chi style, most Wu tai chi schools emphasize small, compact movements over large and medium-sized ones. The Yang and Wu tai chi styles, with all their variations, encompass the vast majority (80 percent or more) of all tai chi practitioners.

The Chen Tai Chi Style

The Chen tai chi style (villiage) is the original style of tai chi from which the Yang tai chi style was created. It is relatively hard to find Chen tai chi style teachers and adherents account for about one percent of all tai chi practitioners.

Unlike most tai chi not all the movements of the Chen tai chi style’s first level of training are done in slow motion. The Chen tai chi style alternates slow-motion movements with short, fast, explosive ones. It demands more physical coordination and may strain the lower back and knees more than other styles; consequently Chen style tai chi is difficult for the elderly or injured to learn. The complexity of the Chen style tai chi movements, which include fast releases combined with jumping kicks and stamping actions, makes the Chen tai chi style more athletic and physically difficult than most other tai chi styles and, as such, is often more appealing to young people.

The Hao Tai Chi Style

The Hao tai chi style is exceedingly rare in China and almost non-existent in the West. The Hao tai chi style is characterized by small frame movements that are extremely small.  Hao tai chi style’s primary focus is on tai chi’s more internal chi movements with physical motions being much less important. As such it is considered an advanced tai chi style that is hard to appreciate for practitioners without significant background knowledge of tai chi.

Combination Tai Chi Styles

Combination tai chi styles are the third most popular styles after the Yang and Wu tai chi styles. These tai chi styles freely mix and match movements from the four other tai chi styles as well as movements from other internal martial arts styles, such as bagua and hsing-i.

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