The ultimate exercise...
The name Tai Chi Chuan actually means "Grand Ultimate Fist" in Chinese. It was the ultimate fighting art for one reason. It held the keys to the only sure-fire door to personal mastery; body awareness and self-knowledge. No wonder it is one of the fastest growing health crazes in the world. Breathe deep from your center, empty your thoughts, sink your Chi energy to the navel and move slowly from the spine. This is the essence of Tai Chi and can take a lifetime to learn.

• Calmly energize your mind and body.
• Lower Your Blood Pressure
• You'll Feel More Relaxed
• Gently Increase Strength & Balance.
• You strengthen your immune system.

How many Tai Chi forms do I need?
A person could perfect motion an spend their entire life benefiting from just one individual Tai Chi movement. You could rise every morning and practice that one movement for 30-60 minutes and gain every positive benefit Tai Chi people usually talk about. However, the average person would quickly become bored by a single movement practiced over and over again for all the years of your life.

Are You in it for the Long Haul?
So if your goal is to use Tai Chi in your daily healthful rituals you should pick a program where you can learn many things in the years to come.

Each day you can say,
" I am little tired of the Yang Family forms, I think I'll practice Chen style today."
Or
"I'm little tired of empty hand forms, this week I'll practice the slow and graceful weapon forms that I have learned."

Since all the forms apply the principles of Tai Chi, you benefit the same from them all. So take a quick look at the incredible list of forms you can learn in the Shaolin-Do internal curriculum. Each of them uses relaxation, awareness, deep breathing and movements from the spine. So do you want to learn in a Tai Chi school that goes from kindergarten through 8th grade, or in a school that goes from Kindergarten to Ph.D.?

Visit the Curriculum page to see our forms.

DOES TAI CHI WORK?
Tai Chi work’s its stress relief magic by teaching each student a new type of attention and open awareness. Rather than the scattered inner mental world that most of us suffer in, the Tai Chi open awareness state is mentally peaceful while physically relaxed and balanced.

HOW DOES A PERSON RELAX?
We certainly do not relax by thinking the word “relax” or even trying to “relax”.
The way a person reaches a relaxed state has nothing to do with consciously letting go of muscular tension. Tai Chi teaches the student become more aware of their body feelings and to include the feelings of space and the environment around them. This open state of awareness has been shown to increase the relaxation response of the human autonomic nervous system (parasympathetic). The student doesn’t have to “do anything” in order to relax; just perform the Tai Chi postures slowly with their attention as wide as possible.

Tai Chi done in this state will completely reverse feelings of tension and anxiety within minutes. In fact, 20 minutes of this type Tai Chi can turn around a person’s entire day.

Unfortunately, learning the movements of tai chi alone will not guarantee that you reach this state. The instructor must understand how the tai chi practice operates on attentional states and how the meditative state differs from the waking, thinking mental state.

For more info about Tai Chi click here