Thoughts from Justin (June 1994)

(from Albuquerque TCC News)

In the past several months I have had T’ai Chi Chih teachers, as guests, from North Dakota, Washington state and California. Other visitors have passed through and joined the Tuesday morning T’ai Chi Chih practice sessions at my house. None of these people had any trouble fitting into the sessions and leading them when it was their turn to do so. Whether it was Jaya, Chris, Jean, Patrick (Chris’s former husband), Sandy, Ed and Noel, or Virginia Harford, all were doing the same movements and knew the order of movements of T’ai Chi Chih. This is surprising. After all, teachers have spread out through much of the world. T’ai Chi Chih is now being taught in Hong Kong, New Zealand, Ecuador, Chile, the Philippines, Mexico, Canada, etc. Yet the quality and progression of the T’ai Chi Chih movements have remained constant. No one that we know of is teaching a different T’ai Chi Chih. This is the great strength of T’ai Chi Chih. The integrity of the teachers has kept the order and movements themselves intact. Recently I wrote a letter saying, in no uncertain terms, I do not want new movements brought into T’ai Chi Chih and I do not want a long connected form that would eventually identify us as a minor variation on T’ai Chi Ch’uan. As long as T’ai Chi Chih is taught honestly the way it has been learned in the Teachers’ Training Courses, just so long will T’ai Chi Chih continue to grow and to provide benefits to many people. If enough people do T’ai Chi Chih as it was originally conceived, we might even have peace in the world.