WHATISTAICHI.doc

http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Philosophy/Taichi/index.html We are a group of people in Atlantic Canada who practice the Yang Family style of Tai Chi Chuan. Our group originates from the teaching of the late Master Lee Shiu-pak, an illustrious teacher and practitioner of Tai Chi who emigrated from China and for many years taught Tai Chi in Montreal. Master Lee grew up in Shanghai where he was one of the four senior students of Chen Wai-ming, himself one of the foremost students of Yang Cheng-fu, the grandson of Yang Lu-chan, the founder of the Yang style of Tai Chi. In the mid 1970s some of Lee Shu-paks students, including Margaret-Anne Capper and Barbara Luxton, came to Halifax and began teaching. Students visited Montreal and Master Lee came on occasion to teach here. After his death in 1982 others such as Bob Jolotta and Christopher Majka in Halifax, Marilyn Manzer in Wolfville and Margaret-Anne Galbraith in Sackville, have carried on the tradition. WHAT IS TAI CHI? The Chinese characters for Tai Chi Chuan can be translated as the Supreme Ultimate Force. The notion of supreme ultimate is often associated with the Chinese 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. Force (or, more literally, fist) can be thought of here as the means or way of achieving this ying-yang, or supreme-ultimate discipline. Tai Chi, as it is practiced in the west today, can perhaps best be thought of as a moving form of yoga and meditation combined. There are a number of so- called forms (sometimes also called sets) which consist of a sequence of movements. Many of these movements are originally derived from the martial arts (and perhaps even more ancestrally than that, from the natural movements of animals and birds) although the way they are performed in Tai Chi is slowly, softly and gracefully with smooth and even transitions between them. For many practicioners the focus in doing