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Exploring the true meaning of being relaxed in the context of tai chi.

Your alarm rings. You stirred. The alarm is still nagging at you, and it’s somehow getting louder. The ear is gaining consciousness. You rolled over. The alarm now is deafening. Your hand searches frantically for the “off” button. It’s no where to be found?!! With a great huff, you wrestled out of the blanket and [...]

Recent late nights (or early mornings) at work have forced me to consider trying a different career path which offers me more flexibility to pursue things I like to do (e.g. tai ji). So I flipped the newspapers and tried applying for something totally unrelated to what I’m doing now.
It was fun looking for something [...]

I’ve done Tai Chi. I’ve done running. And when I knew I could combine them both, I just couldn’t resist to buy that book. And today was the first day I tried out Chi Running, and I have to say… I’m really impressed with the results!
Posture is important in Tai Chi. The alignment from head [...]

I’ve been struggling with the “peng” jin and can’t quite find the right balance between Peng and Muscle. Peng, it seems should have a balloon like quality to it - soft when in contact with something, but strong in terms of the quality of the expansion. It’s the soft and strong that i’m trying to [...]

My dad used a very interesting analogy when bringing his phone to the repair shop. Because my dad couldn’t reproduce the fault, the repairman was not convinced that there was anything wrong with it. So my dad said:
“Look, I’ll only bring in the phone when it’s sick. If it’s not sick, why would I bring [...]

Knee pains are really common in Tai Chi. I remembered my first time (!) when I had a knee pain from doing tai ji training. It was quite frustrating especially when I asked the teacher and all the teacher said was… “yes, there must be something wrong with your stance”. The teacher might have good [...]

I’ve been trying to train a bit longer now that I have more time in my hands. It’s not going as planned. With all the good intentions of training longer every time i stepped out the door, always end up coming back earlier than intended. Today, i tried training the very basics of standing with [...]

I’ve recently been quite wary of buffet style food offerings (it’s about food again!). With the “eat only what you need” mantra in my mind, buffet style seems to go against the very grain of that mantra. It encourages eating a lot, and you don’t care what you eat, just so you eat a lot, [...]

My teacher gave me a very useful mnemonic yesterday. It’s when using 玉女穿梭 or more commonly translated as Fair Lady Playing/Working/Weaving shuttles.
The mnemonic only works well in Mandarin, so my English speaking readers will just have to remember that after guiding the opponent’s attacking hand upwards, your own attacking hand should immediately enter into the [...]