I use the term Tai Chi Qigong as a short hand to describe one way that we practice in our school (Golden Flower Tai Chi School founded by Master San Gee Tam and now led by Master Annukka Holland).

In this instance, Tai Chi is short for Tai Chi Chuan – where Chuan means Boxing. (Tai Chi may also be written Taiji and the sound Chi/ji is a slightly different sound/meaning to Qi.) Tai Chi means supreme ultimate with the sense of combining the highest (or supreme) principle with the most fundamental (or ultimate) principle. We could say that Awareness or Consciousness is the highest principle and Reality is the most fundamental. We could also say that Tai Chi is the paradigm of subject and object. Tai Chi is Yin/Yang.

So Tai Chi Chuan means Martial Arts using the Tai Chi principle (or the principle of Yin and Yang). Inherent within Tai Chi therefore is learning to play with the balance of opposites, such as hard and soft, movement and stillness, light and heavy, upward and downward.

Qigong means Qi practice or Qi exercise and Qi is our energy. Even getting a sense of what we mean by Qi can take time because it is such a different concept to anything we learn in a traditional western upbringing and education, but … put simply, Qi is a feeling. Learning Qigong is about learning to ‘exercise’ our Qi or strengthen our Qi field. The breath is integral part of understanding Qi in Qigong practice and specifically it is the way the body sense and breath sense mingle. The way we teach this in our school starts with our attention becoming stable in the body sense first then breath work is added to this foundation.

So the term Tai Chi Qigong refers to when we use the movements and structures that stem from Martial Arts without any martial intent – instead our sole purpose is the develop or cultivate our Qi. To put it simply we learn a set of movements and a set of ‘energy cultivation’ principles.