Class information and approach

I run classes on Thursday evenings in central Bath and Saturday mornings to the east of Bath in Alice Park. The Alice Park class is held outdoors.

I teach the full Chen-style Tai Chi curriculum where the classes are comprised of a mixture of Tai Chi Exercises and Tai Chi Form.

Tai Chi Exercises are the focus of the 1st hour, so 1800 – 1900 on Thursdays and 1000 – 1100 on Saturdays. Tai Chi Exercises cover warming up, individual Tai Chi exercises, and learning the principles of Tai Chi.

Tai Chi Form builds on the exercises and is about learning the long sequence of movements particular to Tai Chi. On Thursdays, Part 1 of the Chen-style form is learned and practised from about 1900 – 1930 and the full form is learned and practised from about 1930 – 2100. On Saturdays the 2nd hour is a little more varied, but generally focusses on any part of the full form.

Learning Tai Chi fully involves a mixture of exercises and form. Many students attend the classes for 2 hours but it is fine to come along just for 1 or 1.5 hours as fits your life best. If you have a medical condition it’s sometimes enough just to come along for a 1/2 hour.

I also structure the classes so that you don’t have to arrive on the hour. You can arrive half-way through a class and leave half-way through the next. In short, my classes are flexible.

Beginners are always welcome to my classes.

Details of my class locations and times are here.

My Approach

I approach my Tai Chi classes as an anti-dote to modern life. It’s about providing a little breathing space. In our modern life, socially, culturally, as well as psychologically, we tend to spend our time moving rapidly from one thing to another, rarely pausing long enough to truly experience the journey in itself.

In my Tai Chi classes, I take an approach based in classical Tai Chi principles where we spend a long time within each exercise in order to fully relax into each one, giving ourselves the opportunity to immerse ourselves in the experience and pay attention to our ‘body-person.’ (Body-person is a classical Chinese concept that does not differentiate between the mind and body as we do in modern western culture but instead recognises all facets of the person as equally important in how we bring ourselves to the world and function within it.)