What's New

New Tai Chi Schedule Is Available

Please check the section, Class Schedule & Location, for updated new schedules, particularly the section of the Winter Schedule, which our current classes are following.

The new beautiful and serene Tai Chi class site:

Direction to the taiji classes' new location:

 

Decades of Research on Qigong Were Delivered as an Acupuncturists' Continuing Education Course

Jingyu Gu, PhD, Lic. Acu., our Center's main instructor, delivered a lecture course, "A New Definition of Qigong Based on Science and Tradition for Traditional Chinese Medicine," in both Chinese and English to Texas' licensed acupuncturists in Houston on January 21, 2007. This course is for licensed acupuncturists to meet the requirements for their continuing education.

The lecture addresses current confusions in common understanding of both qi and qigong. Both qi and qigong touch on some of the most fundamental concepts in Chinese culture and philosophy, as well traditional Chinese medicine. This lecture, first, sorts through the available and authoritative opinions or definitions on these two concepts. Second, it examines these opinions through and against the most recent scientific research, history, tradition and the speaker’s decades of personal experience to arrive at a better understanding of the issues involved. In the end, it formulates new answers to the initial questions that are consistent and logical. A consistent and logical understanding of qi and qigong can not only benefit clinic practice, offer better guidance to personal qigong learning, but also stimulate further discussion on core issues of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

The lecture generated warm reception by both Chinese and English languages audience. The lecture was offered again in Austin, Texas, at the Texas College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Saturday, March 3, 2007.

Our Mission

Our center's mission is helping people heal their own bodies and minds and to realize the highest possibility of their physicio-psycho-spiritual potentials -- that is, immortality in Daoist sense. We focus on teaching and researching healing and energizing exercises and arts developed on the basis of the ancient Chinese tradition, particularly, the Daoist tradition. Our exercises are designed to cultivate Qi energy, which is the source for every human life.

We also want to share and verify our view that Qi, or human life energy, is not a mysterious thing though its physicio-psycho-spiritual benefits may seem magic. Qi is a physicio-psycho-spiritual energy, in the sense that it involves an individual's total being. Furthermore, every human being is capable of practicing and cultivating this energy. This cultivation will award an accomplished cultivator with a healthy, youthful, self-content, hence, happy, and long life -- a realistic human condition in which the individua's life energy will retain its healthy and functional vitality for as long as he/she chooses to stay on earth. This state brings us close to the ancient Daoist ideal and practice of "immortality."

About the Instructor

Dr. JINGYU GU, PhD & licensed acupuncturist, has had 35 years of experience in taiji and Daoist Neidan [NAY-DUN](Inner Alchemy) qigong. He was a national taichi champion in 1991 and a pupil of Master Ruan Rong-gen who was regarded as one of the China’s living treasures in martial arts. Dr. Gu established the Taiji and Qigong Meditation Center in Austin, Texas in 1989, the first and only school in Central Texas that dedicated itself exclusively to the learning and researching of taiji and qigong.

Meanwhile, Dr. Gu practices acupuncture and Chinese medicine on the basis of his deep and solid knowledge and experience (more than 30 yrs) in internal energy (Qi or Chi) training. This internal Qi energy and its knowledge is THE foundation of acupuncture theory and practice. He teaches taiji, qigong, and Chinese medicine at the Texas College of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Dr. Gu offers courses on these subjects that are certified by the TX Medical Board to the licensed acupuncturists for their continuing education.

Explication on our Center's Logo

This logo contains two parts, a taiji diagram, the circling black and white image, and two Chinese ancient characters, ZhenRen. Zhen, in a modern sense means "genuine" but in the most ancient dictionary, Shuo Wen Jie Zi, (about 2000 years ago), the definition is "immortal who transformed the human form and reached heaven." Later, in Chinese Buddhist classics and Daoist classics, Zhen was combined with Ren that is a generic term for human being. While Buddhist classics referred to Zhenren as a human being that cultivated to successfully purge his/her human desires, Daoist classics further specified Zhenren as a human being that has cultivated his physical, mental and spiritual being to such a degree that he/she masters the techniques of pre-natal breathing and the principles that govern the heaven and earth, yin and yang, life and death. He/She will therefore live a healthy and infinite life (Yellow Emperor's Medical Classic).

The Zhenren in our logo follows this Daoist tradition. Though the literal translation of Zhenren is "genuine human being," we would also choose to render it as "immortals" that renders more accurately Zhenren's original meaning in Yellow Emperor's Medical Classic. When the characters Zhenren are combined with the Taichi diagram, our logo reflects our commitment to pursuing the time-tested beneficial Daoist tradition in our modern times. This commitment is not based on any religious belief, rather it is squarely based on our proven experience. Daoism in our center refers only to its philosophy and empirical practice for immortality. In this sense, our use of this term is similar to modern physicist' application of this term in physics.

Our center's practice has proven that through a systematic practice of Taiji, we modern people are fully capable of realizing the ancient ideal of transforming our human existence to a level of consistent health, serenity, and happiness as long as we live. Our experience also shows that this kind of new successful life comes from a maximally harmonized life energy. We believe that this harmonized life energy is closest to the real meaning of "immortality" in Daoist tradition. Understood in this sense, our logo quite effectively signifies our center's mission: through a systematic Taiji training, to help us heal our own bodies and minds and to realize the highest possibility of our psycho-somatic and spiritual potentials.

Tai Chi Background

T'ai Chi Ch'uan is a Chinese martial art of slow and holistically structured body movements, designed to enhance wellness, longevity and internal peace. Practiced for centuries, T'ai Chi Ch'uan cultivates Chi, the Taoist term for the internal energy which compels life. T'ai Chi Ch'uan is considered one of the most advanced of the Chinese martial arts.

Benefits

Clinical research in the United States and the Peoples' Republic of China has proven that the practice of T'ai Chi Ch'uan leads to significantly improved health. Through a moderate, disciplined training program, mental and physical energies are increased and health problems remedied. The ultimate purpose of T'ai Chi Ch'uan is to cultivate whole-body internal energy which can contribute to a happy, healthy and prosperous life.

Qualities

Well-performed T'ai Chi Ch'uan shows complete peace, harmony and power. The solo form is at the same time light and heavy, spirited but tranquil, fluid but with shape. Similarly, dual form T'ai Chi (push hands) in its effortless fluidity relies on structural and nervous superiority rather than muscular strength to overcome force.

Styles

There are currently five distinct styles of T'ai Chi Ch'uan: Yang, Wu, Chen, Sun and Ho, each of which bears the family name of its founder. The differentiation into these styles was a comparatively modern event.

The styles share most of the same movements and names, and all of the same principles preserved in T'ai Chi Classics. The differences among them, which are minor, emphasize certain characteristics of different states of a systematic T'ai Chi training.

Any style, if practiced systematically, should bear out the characteristics of the other styles at appropriate points in the training process. There is no need to extol one style over the other nor to learn all five styles.

 

 

© Copyright 2009 Taiji & Qigong Meditation Center. All rights reserved.