How can you tell what a tai chi class is offering?

(i) Most classes are health classes
Virtually every tai chi class in the UK is teaching 'tai chi for health'.
Classes offering taijiquan (the martial art) are very rare indeed.

Some classes may advertise themselves as 'taijiquan' but are in fact teaching tai chi for health.

(ii) Martial proof

It is easy to determine if a taijiquan martial arts class is bona fide.
Ask the instructor about:

1. Their syllabus
2. Teaching methodology
3. The Tai Chi Classics
4. Tai chi principles (4 ounces, 6 balanced pairs, 13 postures, fa jing, folding, groundpath, opening & closing, reeling silk, shen, softness, substantial & insubstantial, sung, yielding etc)
5. Martial theory and application
6. Form application (7 applications for every posture)
7. Combat
8. Examples of shuai jiao, chin na and jing skill

A genuine taijiquan instructor will be able to prove their skill to you quite convincingly.

Can I pick the subjects/topics that appeal to me?

Cherry picking has serious drawbacks.
Our syllabus offers a balanced, step-by-step approach to gaining a thorough and comprehensive understanding of tai chi.
Emphasising the parts that you like best or omitting the aspects you do not care for is self-indulgent and will lead to major gaps of knowledge and skill.

Consider: you want to learn French but you have no interest in verbs... You want to be a chef but do not care to chop... You seek to drive a car but do not like to turn left...
See how ridiculous this seems?

Who can study tai chi?

It is important to discriminate between taijiquan and tai chi for health.Anyone can study 'tai chi for health' and age is not an issue.
Taijiquan is not suitable for everyone.If you fancy discovering the martial skills (kung fu) you need to be realistic in terms of expectations. 
We reserve the right to decline tuition:
• if we feel that a student is physically unable to study taijiquan safely• if an individual demonstrates the wrong attitude for taijiquan study 

Our classes

We specialise in teaching:

• Tai chi chuan (martial art)
• Tai chi for health
• Qigong   

We have been practicing since 1975, teaching since 1995.
Both of our instructors are registered with The Tai Chi Union for Great Britain.

Perpetual beginners

Most tai chi students in the UK never get past the preliminaries of the art.
They lack the knowledge and/or the tuition opportunities to explore tai chi properly.

Training at a beginner's level long-term is not good for your health and wellbeing. A crude understanding of tai chi can potentially lead to injury.
To avoid this, students need to make progress in a healthy, safe, fun environment.
They must continually develop their insights, skills and awareness. 
A proven, fully differentiated syllabus should be in place and the opportunity for each student to learn tai chi relative to their own ability.

Most people come to our classes because they are seeking to learn tai chi properly and recognise that this is by far the best tai chi in the North East.
(Patricia)

Summary of prices

Qigong (1 hour) £5
Qigong & tai chi (1½ hours) £7.50
Qigong & tai chi (2 hours) £10
3 week induction course £20
Private lesson (1 hour) £40
Workshop (1½ hours) £10
DVD £20
Membership (optional) £40/month 

http://www.neijiaquan.co.uk/method.htm

Classes resume Monday 20th October

What do school members get for their money?

• Attend once or twice a week
• Train up to 2 hours a night
• Fully-differentiated syllabus
• Authentic skills
• High quality tuition
• Professional learning environment
• Extensive range of skills available • Address individual health concerns & training requirements
• Extremely thorough exploration of the art(s)
• Study new material every week
• Work through the full curriculum
• Receive regular corrections, tips & pointers
• Request bespoke tuition
• Access to highly detailed school DVDs
• Discuss taijiquan theory and related philosophies with Master Waller
• Attend workshops, boot camp and class social events• Advanced level of understanding
• Follows the teachings of the Tai Chi Classics
• Explore 1300 page on-line taijiquan database with guidance from Master Waller

Moving qigong

Moving qigong is similar to standing qigong except the onus is now upon smoothness and relaxation in movement.
No extraneous muscle usage is permitted.

Alignment, softness and breath are important.

Each exercise can be used as a training ground for whole-body movement.
Instead of just moving the arms and shoulders, every part of the structure is involved.
Even the simplest movement should spiral from the toes to the fingertips.

Performed correctly, this is just as difficult as standing qigong.
The body is trained to coordinate left and right, upper and lower, along with cross-patterning.
The muscles serve only to move the bones and must never stiffen or tense.
Tight joints prevent movement.
These exercises are designed to facilitate fluidity with strength.

Qigong is not something that is trained for a while and then discarded.
The student comes back to it repeatedly as they get better at kung fu.
As the ability to move with whole-body strength increases, the exercises can be re-evaluated and trained with a new emphasis.
A movement that once connected the arms to the back now becomes a means of training energy discharge.
Qigong changes as you change.

Tree hugging

Most students begin standing by ‘hugging a tree’/‘holding a balloon’ at chest height. 
Essentially, the arms are positioned in a circular shape and the fingers are lightly opened.

This innocuous exercise quickly becomes a challenge.
The skill is to maintain the posture without in any way ‘holding’ the posture.
Muscle usage must be minimal. Psychological ease and relaxation are paramount.

The posture must be natural and comfortable. Do not strain the knees by squatting.

The idea is to let go.

This is not easy.  A lifetime of tension will pain you and the temptation will be to hang on.
Liz Koch, author of The Psoas Book maintains that you must reach a stage where the body feels safe and begins to shake.
This shaking is quite disconcerting. It is not muscle fatigue. It is the product of deep relaxation.
All the stored tension in the joints and vertebra is being let out.

The shaking cannot be forced or contrived. It is accomplished by not-doing.
By stopping the habit of tension.
By letting go.

Daily standing for 15-20 minutes will produce the required outcome providing internal relaxation takes place.

Energy & muscle

Qigong operate on two levels simultaneously; they encourage the healthy flow of energy and they strengthen the structure of the body.

This process of building strength is seen by many people to arise from the energy flow alone but this is rather misleading.
Qi does not move the bones, muscles do. Nerves direct the muscles and energy fuels the entire system.
Without energy, nothing would happen, but without muscles there would be no strength.
Muscles turn energy into motion.

This is not to be confused with gym work or weight training. The degree of muscle usage in qigong must be minimal.
The aim is to employ the tendons, ligaments and fasciae for increased strength and support.

You must only use the degree of muscle strength necessary to hold the limb in place; and this is always far less than you first realise.

Qigong

Start your quest for whole-body strength by standing still; qigong is the foundation of kung fu.

It involves static postures and slow-motion movements that are easy to perform.
The static postures are held for lengthy periods, often up to an hour.
The moving sets are small groups of exercises, with about 10 repetitions each.

Moving with kwa

If you can feel the kwa moving, it is possible combine a number of neigong for the second stage of uniting upper & lower.

In a bow stance, use the kwa to spiral the lead leg back towards the centre.

This serves to draw the thigh bone and squares the pelvis; it leads the energy up from the ground and into your hands.
It also lays the foundation for what may someday become centre-directed jing.

External strength

The conventional use of strength involves the application of force at a given, specific moment in time. If the aim is to break an arm, the individual exerts for a moment and the effect occurs.

The problem with this is that it is tiring. It wears you out.
Exerting the muscles is not very energy efficient because most of the effort accomplishes nothing; it feeds back into you when resistance is encountered.

'Internal power' is altogether different. Exerting never occurs.
The limbs are imbued with strength at all times, so an arm break would be performed with no more force than raising a glass of water to your mouth.

Where does the power come from?

It comes from unifying the body and projecting a wave of kinetic energy (jing) throughout the entire structure as and when necessary.
It is the wave that breaks the arm, not the local muscle strength.

Kung fu attitude

I teach in the UK and my wife is from Kuching, Borneo (Malaysia). We are continually surprised at the bad attitude we encounter from modern students in our own classes and other UK classes we hear about.

My wife is used to the Asian way and is appalled by how English students treat their teachers.

Reading Sifu Kenneth Ware's Kung Fu Instructor Facebook group (and others), it is great to hear that there is such a good kung fu attitude in the US: http://kungfukntc.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/students-with-honour.html

http://rachelwallertaichi.wordpress.com/

Power?

Consider Newton's third law of motion: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The more force you apply, the more resistance you will encounter.
This is clearly counter-productive.

Slow, smooth, soft movements are a sure indicator of skill.

Why become a member?

• There is no membership fee
• The opportunity to study chin na, shuai jiao, baguazhang, taijiquan, hard qigong, neigong, self defence, san da, san sau and weapons
• The option of grading or not grading
• New members receive 2 free DVDs
• Work through the full curriculum
• Receive regular corrections, tips & pointers
• Request bespoke tuition
• Have an on-line personal progress page
• Use weapons 
• School database
• Seek training guidance and advice from Master Waller
• Wear a uniform
• Access to highly detailed school DVDs
• Pass belts (optional)
• Discuss theory and related philosophies with Master Waller
• Attend workshops, boot camp and class social events