My First Taichi Blog

I started this taichi blog to record the journey I am taking in learning Taichi, a Chinese internal martial art style. Taichi is also called as taichichuan, taiji or taijichuan. Many people called taichi a form of moving meditation but Taichi is indeed a very deep internal martial art systems. Its purpose is to cultivate your chi to improve your health, prolong your life and is a very high level, effective but "hard-to-learn-and-apply correctly" self defense art. Taichi has many self defense applications but not usually taught to the open public. Many people practice taichi for its health and aesthetic aspect. To most people, taichi helps relax your body, relieve stress and improve your health.

I have learned taichi first with Valerie, a taichi teacher at Orange Coast College, back in the 1990s. She teaches the Wang-Ping style of Yang Taichichaun which consists of 64 forms. It was a community service class and offered once a semester, for 6-8 weeks long. Each week we study a few techniques at a time and build up from that until we finish the form. I remembered it took almost two years for me to finish the form. I like her teaching because she take time to make sure we do each technique right, standing in the right stand, has balance and the do the movements correctly. I can't hardly remember how the form go but I remembered I could do it very smoothly. I trained in Shaolin, Karate and Aikido so doing the taichi movements wasn't the hard part because it is similar to most Shaolin moves.

So that was my first experience with taichichuan.