The practice of mindfulness meditation, originally taught by the Buddha 2500 years ago in India as a ‘middle way’ to spiritual enlightenment, spread across Asia through Nepal, Burma, Tibet, China and down to south east Asia. However it wasn't until the 1960s, when the hippy movement started adopting exotic spiritual practices as a way of rebelling against the mainstream ideas, that the practice of mindfulness began to spread through the west. During this period, Tibet was tak

Yang style Tai Chi Chuan had a solid reputation as an effective martial art up until around 80 years ago. Those who doubted it would challenge the Yang family and find out the hard way that, yes, the odd slow training style did produce strong martial artists. Although it still has devoted martial artists who train the full function of the art, it has also grown since then to emphasise the health and self development ('spiritual') aspects more than its martial roots. We don't

We begin all classes with Standing Post Chi Kung (Qigong). The first posture is Wu Chi (Wuji), which is a type of meaningful, meditative standing. Then we bend our knees, raise our arms and get on with studying the full traditional curriculum. As such it is rare to find someone spending a lot of time on Wu Chi position, unless they are in that moment too tired or sick to do other aspects. Simply, it isn’t very exciting for the beginner and does not seem to be Tai Chi exercise

Tai Chi is difficult to de-mystify, so when you begin Tai Chi it is better to leave it somewhat unknown. It is precisely the suspension of trying to figure things out that will allow a deeper experience of Tai Chi anyway. If you decide what Tai Chi is, you limit it. So when beginning, expect a certain amount of confusion. As Tai Chi is known to be an endless journey, you can always improve and go deeper into the art, evolving and refining. Consequently one's ideas about the