Functional Taijiquan

This!

🌀 Ever feel like your arms are just… doing their own thing?

“In Tai Chi your arms do not move except as part of your body. If they act independently, the exercise is worthless.”
- Cheng Man Ching

Rooted in the feet.
Powered by the legs.
Directed by the waist.
Expressed through the hands.

When your body is connected,
movement becomes smoother, stronger, and more natural.

Tai Chi isn’t about isolated motion.
It’s about integration.

💬 Are you moving as one… or in pieces?

Over the last few years online fitness marketers have discovered through keywording that certain words dramatically increase click-through rates and Tai Chi is one of them

After all it infers gentle exercise, longevity, and Eastern wisdom. So when advertisers combine Tai Chi and walking, they hit the perfect demographic: people over 50 looking for a low-impact exercise. Because this group spends more time on Facebook, they click more health-related content and they have a higher disposable income.

But despite all of these adverts when you look at what's behind them, Tai Chi walking turns out to be completely unrelated to Tai Chi - for what is offered is nothing more than slow marching, knee lifts, light callisthenics, and simple balance exercises. These are all good exercises but they are not Tai Chi - and while Im on the subject - these exercises are everywhere and freely available by searching Youtube for fitness exercises for the over 50s.

Such poor marketing is a shame because it misses out all the real skills that Tai Chi does train. Not muscle gain, not weight loss, not “your spouse won’t recognise you in 2 weeks” nonsense, but excellent skills in balance control, coordination, joint strength, breathing, energy boosts, concentration and that elusive state of “flow”.

So is Tai Chi walking a thing? Well, its is a bit like selling “Mozart breathing.”
Breathing is real. Mozart is real.
But putting the two together doesn’t make a new musical technique.

Join me on March 14th as I teach a Tai Chi and Push Hands class for Art Students League of Denver.

Tai Chi & Push Hands: Movement and Listening as Loving Gestures Join longtime martial artist and Tai Chi instructor Bradley Ryan at the ASLD Englewood Branch for a free hour-long class as part of our Loving Gestures exhibit. The session will explore how love is expressed through mindful movement and attentive connection, focusing on foundational Tai Chi forms an...

“Power of Chi” is playing on quite a few of the streaming channels right now. It was a 2025 documentary narrated by Morgan Freeman, with tai chi Master Adam Mizner demonstrating the art against such notables as Lyoto Machida and Fabricio Werdum, as well as basketball and fencing stars, and even the world‘s strongest man. He basically tosses them around like dolls, leaving them dumbfounded as they had no control over him. I highly recommend watching it.

Fu Zhongwen: The form should be practiced six to eight times in a row each day. Only in this way can students catch the feeling of real kung fu. This is the way Yang Chengfu taught. The form itself should take 20 minutes give or take a minute or two. Too fast it becomes sloppy and too slow it becomes “stopped". Practicing six to eight times throughout the day is not the same thing and not as productive. It must be in continuous sequence. Once in the morning and once in the evening is good for health, but it does not lead to martial skill. The first couple times is warm-up and the fourth and fifth time you start to improve your kung fu.

Her details are so good!

20251101老師（70 years old）新架一路即興

What he says is extremely important, and applies to all martial arts. 

In modern Shaolin kung fu, Taolu refers to choreographed routines that simulate combat with an imaginary opponent. It's a common way for today's practitioners to learn and refine their technique. In its origins, Shaolin kung fu had no set sequences — only instinctive knowledge drawn from real combat experience. Stay tuned for CGTN's documentary "The Spirit of Shaolin" to explore the roots and evolution of this legendary martial art.

Do not miss this! I rarely teach this, but it’s one of my favorite systems. (And no, it not Xing Yi)

Zhai Weichuan - our 83 y.o. master of Wu 武 style Taijiquan.