1. What is Tai Chi?

The word "Tai Chi" was first introduced in the "Book of Changes", which is thought of being used for divination in ancient China. The word means the supreme ultimate point that engenders everything in the world.

2. What is Tai Chi Graph?

There is also a well-known pattern related to that word. It is called Tai Chi Graph and represents not only the definition of Tai Chi, but also a concept of yin-yang, the notion that one can see a dynamic duality (male/female, active/passive, dark/light, forceful/yielding, etc.) in all things.

In Song Dynasty (about 1000 years ago), a famous philosopher named Zhou Dunyi wrote two magnum opuses "Tai Chi Graph" and "Explanation of Tai Chi Graph", which had impacted the whole Chinese society for eight hundred years. A cavalier Chen Wangting carried forward the theory of Tai Chi to create a new set of martial art - Tai Chi Chuan.

3. What is Tai Chi Chuan?

Tai Chi Chuan, as it is practiced in the west today, can perhaps best be thought of as a moving form or yoga and meditation combined. There are a number of so-called Forms, which consist of a sequence of movements. Many of these movements are originally derived from the martial arts, or even more ancestrally than that, from the natural movements of animals and birds. Those Forms are performed slowly, softly and gracefully with smooth and even transitions between them.

In Chinese philosophy and medicine there exists the concept of 'Chi', a vital force that animates the body. One of the avowed aims of Tai Chi Chuan is to foster the circulation of 'Chi' within the body, the belief being by doing so the health and vitality of the person and enhanced. This 'chi' circulates in patterns that are close related to the nervous and vascular system and thus the notion is closely connected with that of the practice of acupuncture and other oriental healing arts.

Another aim of Tai Chi Chuan is to foster a calm and tranquil mind, focused on the precise execution of these exercises. Learning to do them correctly provides a practical avenue for learning about such things as balance, alignment, fine-scale motor control, rhythm of movement, the genesis of movement from the body's vital center, and so on.

Because the Tai Chi movements have their origins in the martial arts, practicing them does have some martial applications. The emphasis in Tai Chi is on being able to channel potentially destructive energy (in the form of a kick or a punch) away from one in a manner that will dissipate the energy or send it in a direction where it is no longer a danger.

Tai Chi Chuan takes root from the Chinese culture. It has close relationship with other Chinese philosophy, like Taoism, a reflective, mystical Chinese tradition first associated with the scholar and mystic Lao Tsu, an older contemporary of Confucius. As a philosophy, Taoism has many elements but fundamentally it espouses a calm, reflective and mystic view of the world steeped in the beauty and tranquility of nature.