Instructor: Dorel Rotar

Tai Chi Made Easy

Sessions Meet:
TO BE ANNOUNCED

Benefits:
This beginner's class will ease you into the practice of Tai Chi. The benefits of practicing Tai Chi are manifold. It reduces pain and stiffness, lowers stress, enhances flexibility, and strengthens joints. See below for Dorel's intermediate Tai Chi class.

Tai Chi for Health
Sessions Meet:
WEDNESDAYS, 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM

Current Session:
August 6 to September 24 (2008)

Benefits: This intermediate Tai Chi class is intended for students who have learned the basic forms and philosophy of Tai Chi and want to pursue it further. As with the beginner's class, there are many health benefits to the practice of Tai Chi. It reduces pain and stiffness, enhances flexibility, strengthens joints, generates vitality, improves balance and coordination, and brings joy to your life. 

Location: Pacific Complementary Medicine Center,
Seminar Room (suite 9A)

Cost: 2-month session for $64.00
(payable upon registration)

Reserve a space, as class sizes
are limited to 10 people.

Historically, T'ai Chi Ch'uan has been regarded as a martial art, and its traditional practitioners still teach it as one. Even so, it has developed a worldwide following among many thousands of people with little or no interest in martial training for its aforementioned benefits to health and health maintenance. Some call it a form of moving meditation, and T'ai Chi theory and practice evolved in agreement with many of the principles of traditional Chinese medicine. Besides general health benefits and stress management attributed to beginning and intermediate level T'ai Chi training, many therapeutic interventions along the lines of traditional Chinese medicine are taught to advanced T'ai Chi students.

The physical training of T'ai Chi Ch'uan is described in the writings of its older schools as being characterized by the use of leverage through the joints based on coordination in relaxation, rather than muscular tension, in order to neutralize or initiate physical attacks. The slow, repetitive work involved in the process of learning how that leverage is generated gently and measurably increases and opens the internal circulation: (breath, body heat, blood, lymph, peristalsis, etc.). Over time, proponents say, this enhancement becomes a lasting effect, a direct reversal of the constricting physical effects of stress on the human body. This reversal allows much more of the students' native energy to be available to them, which they may then apply more effectively to the rest of their lives; families, careers, spiritual or creative pursuits, hobbies, etc.

The study of T'ai Chi Ch'uan involves three primary subjects:

• Health - an unhealthy or otherwise uncomfortable person will find it difficult to meditate to a state of calmness or to use T'ai Chi as a martial art. T'ai Chi's health training therefore concentrates on relieving the physical effects of stress on the body and mind.

• Meditation - the focus meditation and subsequent calmness cultivated by the meditative aspect of T'ai Chi is seen as necessary to maintain optimum health (in the sense of effectively maintaining stress relief or homeostasis) and in order to use it as a soft style martial art.

• Martial art - the ability to competently use T'ai Chi as a martial art is said to be proof that the health and meditation aspects are working according to the dictates of the theory of T'ai Chi Ch'uan.

In its traditional form (many modern variations exist which ignore at least one of the above requirements) every aspect of its training has to conform with all three of the aforementioned categories.