The phrase “one part moves, all parts move” will be familiar to anybody who has practiced Tai Chi or one of the internal arts for a while.
Taken literally, I think you could come up with a number of bizarre interpretations for what it means, but like most of the phrases from old Chinese texts, it makes a lot more sense when you already know what it is talking about, and very little if you don’t.
“The whole body should be threaded together through every joint without the slightest break.”
This is a recurring theme in old Chinese texts written about martial arts, not just Tai Chi, that the whole body is connected together. The fact that it keeps getting mentioned should be a clue that it doesn’t mean simply being relaxed and moving – there’s something deeper going on here.
It’s referring to the elastic quality of the body that develops from continued practice in qigong or Tai Chi exercise. It’s hard to find because initially there’s nothing to feel, but over time it gently reveals itself through continued practice. And when it does you finally understand what it means to say that when one part moves, all parts move. When the body is connected together a movement in the middle should be felt throughout the body.
Project Sifu (2025) A documentary and short film directed by Wayne Wong is out on YouTube for you to watch right now!
“Project Sifu brings together the art of martial arts training and the creative world of filmmaking to inspire and empower young people in the UK. By blending physical discipline with cinematic storytelling, we aim to foster a deeper understanding of cultural heritage, promote mental and physical well-being, and address critical issues like knife crime and violence.”
What makes Project Sifu different is that it’s not about teaching kids martial arts — that’s a story we’re all familiar with — it’s about teaching them martial arts cinema. The description explains:
“WHY MARTIAL ARTS CINEMA?
Martial arts and cinema offer a unique combination of physical discipline and artistic expression. By engaging in these practices, participants not only gain physical strength and mental resilience but also learn valuable lessons in storytelling, teamwork, and cultural appreciation. This project is a celebration of these two powerful mediums and their potential to inspire and transform.”
Here’s the thing: Every movement in Tai Chi is part of a circle, either clockwise or anti-clockwise, and sometimes parts of the Tai Chi yin/yang diagram (like a figure eight infinity symbol), but they are always circular, even the moves that look linear on the surface. If it looks linear it’s because the circle has become so small as to be invisible (or at least that should be the reason).
I find that to really understand this you need to go through the whole form until you understand how each movement is circular, and how to generate that circle from your feet, legs and middle, not the arms. Of course, that’s easier said than done!
Go through each movement of the form and break down how it is composed of circles and learn how to generate them from the turn of the middle of the body, using the legs to help, and not from the shoulders.
Where the circle begins
The important thing is not to draw imaginary circles with your hands. That is just arm waving.
The real work is to feel where the circle begins. Does it start in the shoulder, or does it come up from the foot, through the leg, into the middle of the body, and only then express itself through the arm?
That is the difference between making a circular shape and moving in a circular way.
So, when you practice, pick one movement and ask yourself: where is the circle? Is it turning horizontally, vertically, diagonally, or through the body like a spiral? Can you make it bigger? Can you make it smaller? Can you still feel it when it becomes almost invisible?
Over time, this changes how the form feels. The postures stop being separate positions joined together by transitions. They become circles turning into circles, opening and closing, rising and sinking, appearing and disappearing.
And that, really, is Tai Chi: not a sequence of poses, but a body learning how to move without corners.
Competitive tai chi is growing fast around the world — but not everyone in the traditional community is happy about what that means
There’s a version of tai chi that most people think they know. It happens slowly in parks. It’s mostly associated with retirees, stress reduction, gentle movement, and the occasional vague mention of “energy”. In the Western imagination, tai chi often exists somewhere between meditation, physiotherapy and soft exercise.
But another version of tai chi has also been growing in parallel. One involving national teams, international judges, choreographed routines, competition scoring systems, and athletes performing explosive movements in brightly lit arenas. And it’s getting big.
The recent World Taijiquan Championships in Bulgaria drew competitors from more than 40 countries, with hundreds of athletes taking part in solo forms, weapon routines although I didn’t see any evidence of push hands events, or anything approaching sparring. For many outsiders, the sheer scale of the competition may come as a surprise. But for people inside the martial arts world, it highlights something that’s been developing for years: tai chi is splitting into several very different cultures.
Take a look:
One culture sees tai chi primarily as an internal martial art rooted in body mechanics, structure, pressure, balance and cultivated force. Another treats it as a performance discipline, one judged visually, packaged for audiences, and optimised for competition. Another sees it as the aforementioned health version done by older people in parks as a kind of meditatve exercise.
That tension between these different versions of taijiquan has existed for a long time, but events like the World Taijiquan Championships make it impossible to ignore.
When tai chi becomes a spectator sport
Competitive tai chi performance changes things. The moment movements are judged publicly, practitioners begin optimising for what judges and audiences can easily see. Stances become lower. Movements become larger. Expressions become sharper and more theatrical. Routines drift toward athletic spectacle.
That doesn’t automatically make them bad, but you’ll notice that the event also seemed to incorporate dance troupes, cheerleaders and gymnasts.
The fact is, competitive athletes are phenomenally skilled. The flexibility, balance, coordination and body control required at elite level are extraordinary. Some modern taiji competitors move with a degree of precision that most traditional practitioners could only dream of.
But critics argue that something important can get lost in the process.
Traditional tai chi training often focuses on subtle internal qualities that don’t necessarily look impressive from the outside: relaxation under pressure, whole-body connection, efficient force transfer, breath regulation, sensitivity, and structural integrity. Those things are difficult to score visually. A judge can easily reward height, speed and extension. It’s much harder to reward sung — the relaxed but connected quality that many internal stylists consider central to the art.
This is where the divide starts because it leads to the question, “is this still tai chi?” And then to the almost inevitable, “what is tai chi anyway?”
The gymnastics problem
The problem isn’t unique to tai chi. Almost every martial art changes when competition becomes the dominant measuring stick. Brazilian jiu-jitsu drifted toward increasingly sport-specific positions once tournaments became central to the culture. Judo changed dramatically after leg grabs were restricted. Olympic taekwondo evolved into something many traditional practitioners barely recognize.
The tai chi world is fractured, but for some this can be positive. Competitive formats bring structure, international exposure, younger athletes and a clearer pathway for progression. Without competition, tai chi risks becoming culturally invisible outside wellness circles.
But others worry the art slowly transforms into a kind of martial gymnastics — technically difficult, visually impressive, but increasingly detached from the body method and martial function that originally gave the movements meaning.
The tai chi world is made even more complicated by the fact that as well as the wushu performers, and the traditionalists, there’s another group — the martial artists who want to use tai chi as a real martial art.
You might imagine they’d be naturally aligned with the traditionalists, however, in my experience the traditionalists hate any attempt to put on gloves and ‘prove tai chi works’ and refer to it as ‘just kickboxing’.
The irony is that all three, or even four, sides often genuinely love tai chi. They just value different things.
The global expansion of tai chi
What the World Taijiquan Championships really demonstrate is that tai chi is no longer a niche cultural practice confined to China or small traditional schools.
Competitors are emerging from Europe, South America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and the United States. Universities teach it. Health systems study it. Sports organizations organize around it. Younger athletes are entering through competition pathways rather than traditional lineage structures.
That changes the art whether people want it to or not.
Huge news for anyone who’s ever thought: ‘I should buy Graham’s book someday’ — your extremely specific moment has arrived. It’s back in stock.
Written by Seymour Yang and Graham Barlow, two experienced black belt coaches, the book (US Letter size) features over 970 hand drawn illustrations (no AI is used at all) accompanied by over 50,000 words across 270 pages. It is printed on premium quality silk paper and cased within a softback anti-scuff matt cover.
Why struggling to remember tai chi moves might be exactly what your brain needs
I’ve been running tai chi classes for years now, and the number one thing beginners say to me is always some variation of: “I didn’t think it would be this hard to remember the moves!” It’s usually coupled with a look of astonishment.
I mean, tai chi looks pretty simple, right? Older people do it, for goodness’ sake, so it must be pretty simple. Why is it so hard to remember the moves?
I’m only talking about learning the choreography of the form here, not even trying to delve into the principles that make the choreography ‘internal’ movement, like moving from the dantien.
The instructions for learning choreography are pretty simple. They’re things like: “Shift your weight to your left foot, pivot to your right and raise your toes, then transfer your weight to your right leg, raise the right arm, and lower the left arm.”
You even have somebody to follow along with to make it easier.
But after a few follow-alongs, when I turn around and say, “Now you do it,” there’s an immediate crisis and it all falls apart. That look of astonishment appears, and the question comes again:
“Why is it so hard?”
I don’t know. Maybe it’s because we don’t routinely do things that require us to use our brains to memorize movements while performing them. Perhaps learning to drive comes close.
I’d say learning a tai chi form is more of a mental workout than a physical one. It’s mentally very tiring. You can feel the effort people have to make to learn the sequence. It’s hard work, but you don’t need to be particularly mobile or fit to perform the movements.
In terms of tai chi as a health exercise, I wonder if the mental workout is perhaps the most beneficial part of the process. Studies into dementia have shown that changes in the brain start happening years before symptoms emerge, and changing your daily habits so that you actively use your brain is one of the things you can do to slow down, or even reverse, the process — if you catch it early.
But it is a physical workout — done right, Tai chi will make your thighs ache. In a good way.
I was listening to a podcast (from 54:20 onwards) the other day that emphasized how important strong legs are to your overall physical health, especially for preventing dementia. With tai chi, every day is leg day, so we’ve got that covered.
“Your legs protect your memory” was a phrase used in the podcast. It was said by a doctor, but I never know how much weight to give podcast advice. That said, the number one reason older people end up in the emergency room is falls. What prevents falls? Leg strength. Studies also suggest leg strength may help the brain more directly.
It’s certainly true that as we age, our legs get thinner, leading to the Chinese phrase “you die from the feet up.” And tai chi does help with leg strength.
Physical exercise is important for dementia prevention, and so is a brain workout. With tai chi, you get both — a mental workout combined with physical exercise.
And that might also be why it’s so hard, but that might also be the real benefit.
That frustration — forgetting what comes next, getting lost halfway through, having to piece it back together — is the process.
You’re asking your brain to do something unfamiliar, to coordinate thought and movement in real time, to hold focus for longer than it’s used to.
So when someone asks me why it’s so hard, the honest answer is:
Because if it were easy, it probably wouldn’t be doing you nearly as much good.
World Tai Chi & Qigong Day is held each year in over 80 nations on “the last Saturday of April” each year. April 25th, 2026 … at 10 am local time all over the world. It begins with mass Tai Chi, Chi Kung, and Mind Body events in the earliest time zones of New Zealand, and then spreads at the world turns, 10 am local time worldwide, ending with final events in Hawaii (USA).
To be honest, a lot of the websites I’ve found about it seem outdated and unloved. It doesn’t really feel like there’s much of an organisation behind it these days, however, you might like to practice at 10.00am on Saturday. There could be an event in your local area, so have a search.
Remember those hilarious ‘get a 6-pack with tai chi’ adverts?
Do you remember those tai chi scam adverts that I wrote about a while ago? For a moment in time they were everywhere, usually with a well-muscled older Asian man telling you how you can get a six pack from some tai chi walking.
The whole thing was obviously created in AI and an obvious scam… but it was so obviously fake that it made no sense. However, thanks to Paul Bowman for finding this video which explains what was really going on.
The Empress on the throne when Tai Chi arrived in the Royal Court
Empress Dowager Cixi (1904)
Many accounts of tai chi history focus narrowly on Yang Luchan, the Wu brothers, and Chen Village. But that lens is too tight. The wider political and cultural context matters, and a useful place to begin is with the Empress Dowager Cixi, who was on the throne when Yang LuChan first set foot in Beijing.
The ‘You’re Dead To Me’ podcast takes a comedic look at history. You might find it a bit frivolous, but the history is serious, and provided by Professor of Chinese History at the University of Manchester, Professor Yang Wen Jung. In this episode host Greg Jenner takes a look at the formidable Empress Dowager Cixi and her difficult rise to power.
Once a formidable, disciplined force, Manchu society had, over generations in power, become associated with decadence and decline, compounded by the intrigue and factionalism of court politics. This was the environment into which tai chi arrived in Beijing.
It’s worth asking why the Wu brothers chose this moment to introduce Yang Luchan to the imperial court. By then, the battle-hardened Manchu warriors who had conquered the Ming dynasty were long gone. The Qing elite faced a different challenge: their distinct Manchu identity was weakening, and there was growing pressure to appear more culturally ‘Chinese’ in order to maintain legitimacy with the broader population.
Perhaps what was needed was a way to reinvent a shared sense of “Chineseness”. Something cultural, visible, and unifying. Tai chi fits that role rather neatly.
The Tai Chi Notebook 