Hello! Thank you for visiting my page.

I started learning T’ai Chi Chih by accident. I was looking for a suitable space for a Reiki Share and put the request out on a health and wellbeing network Facebook page. Tina Wells posted a photo of her garden room, where she teaches her T’ai Chi Chih classes and invited me to visit.  Tina suggested I might like to learn T’ai Chi Chih, and I decided that a moving meditation practice would suit me, as I trained as a specialist physical education teacher, so movement has always been a major part of my life. Although I loved the effect my Reiki seated meditations had on my wellbeing, I prefer to move, so practices such as T’ai Chi Chih and Qigong (which I am also trained to teach) are great for me.

A few months later, when Tina did a demonstration workshop at an event, Laurin McDonald joined the classes as well. Thanks to Tina and Tracy Gibbons, our second referring teacher, we were prepared and ready to travel to the US for our Teacher Accreditation course from 1/11th March 2018, just when the “Beast from the East” was due to hit the UK!

On our return, Laurin and I began setting up our classes in and around Banbury. I set up several public classes, which proved very popular.

As we now only had four accredited teachers in the UK we knew we had to have more teachers over here so that we could spread this effective practice. So, Laurin and I worked together to create the T’ai Chi Chih Discovery Workshop, designed especially for complementary therapists which we planned to take on a UK tour. That was just before the Covid 19 pandemic invaded the UK, completely derailing our plans. Despite this, we managed to gather a group of seven students interested in becoming teachers. As they were geographically scattered – two in Amsterdam, one in Romania, one in Wales, three in the UK, I worked with them on Zoom.  For different reasons, several candidates dropped out, so four candidates continued, with a face to face weekend leading up to the Accreditation with Sandy McAlister in the UK.  Later, another candidate came on board, which  culminated in a total of five new teachers becoming accredited, three in the U.K., Kate Angell, Vanessa Petterson and Adam Lacey, and two in The Netherlands, Marcella Levie and Orly Mani, thereby beginning to build a European community to spread the practice even further.

Zoom Classes

At the start of the pandemic, I began leading guided practices for my students, and preparing teacher candidates via Zoom, which worked very effectively.

Although I am based in the centre of the UK, the exciting thing about teaching online, is that it demolishes geographical barriers, allowing me to teach students across the whole of Europe. So, do contact me at lesleynell@yahoo.co.uk –  I look forward to hearing from you!