Thursday Night Tai Chi Class

I go to tai chi class 4 times a week but Thursday nights are something special.

The class is in an old school martial arts hall. Think 70s kung fu movies, old black and white photos everywhere, yin yang symbols here and there, weapons mounted on the wall, concrete floors with paint splashed onto it. The place is steeped in martial history. The other tai chi studio I visit looks like a yoga studio in comparison.

There are usually 5 students including me: the retired Chinese couple, Dave, and Stuart. Everyone but me has minimum 15 years of tai chi experience which is why I feel a bit out of place here. It’s not advertised as an advanced class but it most definitely is one. It lasts 2 hours. We do chi kung, warm up exercises, and the short and long form like any other class which takes up an hour. For 55 minutes, we do posture testing.

In tai chi, posture testing is when you do a part of the form while there is someone actively pushing against you. This seems fine but the tester can push at different levels. They aren’t pushing with physical strength. They tai chi push. They push with energy. You can get a posture to work with a normal guy but to get it to work on someone who also does tai chi is what we want.

At the start of this year, we began from the beginning of the long form. The long form takes about 20 minutes in our school. 10 months later, we are about 30 seconds into the form. At this rate, it will take 40 years to complete it but completing the form corrections isn’t the point. Since once we are done, we’ll just do it all over again.

This may sound a bit discouraging. Imagine coming week after week and not getting anything to work. And when we move on, it still doesn’t work. It’s not actually that bad since as my teacher said: “If you get the first move to work perfectly, you will have mastered tai chi.”

We never get it to work perfectly but we get closer with each passing session. We’ll probably never reach perfection but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive for it.

We have two teachers in this class, Tony and Alan. Tony is a long time practitioner. I would guess at least 20 years. He’s bald now but I’ve been told in the past he had hair. So he’s done it so much and so long that his hair has fallen out. I have this to look forward to.

Alan is a legitimate tai chi master. He’s Sifu’s son, which makes him a 7th generation Yang style tai chi master. The lineage of teachers can be traced back to the creator of Yang style tai chi. It’s pretty cool to learn from him. He’s a pretty chill funny guy, a GP, family man, about to hit 50 but could pass for half that age.

Last Thursday, two new people came to class. Alan wasn’t there, which is rare, so Tony took the class. I’ve seen people come and go to this class. People from the other studio occasionally visit but they don’t stay for long. I had never seen two complete beginners come here though.

They came in late so missed the chi kung, which we usually do for about 30 minutes, but they joined us for the warm up exercises. While we did the form, Tony taught them the start of the form.

When I first met Tony, I thought he didn’t like me but I soon learned he’s just kinda like that. At the start of class, he would do his sword form to himself and wouldn’t acknowledge you until class started. Over time, I think he has warmed up to me. I ask him questions and he frowns at me for asking such a silly question. He answers my silly questions which is how I know he has warmed up to me.

While I consistently failed the posture test with everyone in class, the Chinese man from the Chinese couple speaks to me in Cantonese. I only understand him half the time but don’t say anything about it. I know what I’m doing wrong already. There’s no connection.

To move someone in tai chi, you need to connect first (kinda like real life). Instant connection needs to be worked on. Even a slow burn connection takes work. He told me I didn’t have it yet and let go. Dave comes up and looks at me expectantly, wondering what he said. I told him he said I was bad and I did it badly. We all laughed.

While Tony goes through the corrections on what we do one by one I drift off and look at the two new people. They have stopped practising the form and are now looking at the old photos on the wall. Tony has left them too long on their own and they have wandered off. There’s only so much form work a new person would want to do so I get it.

After failing with most of the people in class, Tony comes over to test me and he just says one word, “Better.” He says better a lot. It’s a good sign when he says better and it’s all I can hope for. To be better each time I come to class.

I test the Chinese woman from the Chinese couple and I always say the same thing to her. I say “Okay!” She just laughs at me since the feedback isn’t that helpful. I genuinely think it is okay though! I have to work on sensitivity and giving feedback too.

For the last 5 minutes, we do this thing called dynamic push hands. It’s apparently a Yang family secret training method. When done properly, it completely exhausts someone after just a few rounds. It’s used to train our intention and physically conditions the arms and body. I think I lasted maybe 2 minutes which is shorter than usual.

Stuart gives me some tips while we wait around for Tony to finish dynamically pushing everyone. I kinda get it but I also kinda don’t.

We shake hands and introduce ourselves to the new people at the end of class. They tell us they’ll be back next week. I hope to see them next week. They seem nice. They are a Chinese couple too. It’s nice to have more people in class to train with. The stronger new people become, the stronger you become because you have stronger training partners.

That’s how everyone becomes better and that’s what makes a special tai chi class.

Written 3rd October 2025