Mark Wilson
Tune into T'ai Chi
Vauxhall Centre Home
The members of the T'ai Chi group held at the Vauxhall Centre have been working together to become and independent group. They are now looking to apply for funding through local community grants and lottery awards as well as writing to local businesses for sponsorship.
The funding is to cover the cost of the excellent tutor Cos Stephanides who has been teaching the group for over four years.
Cos has adapted the T'ai Chi moves to suit people of varying disabilities.
Cos Stephanides is a practioner from the John Ding international Academy of T'ai Chi Chuan which the Vauxhall centre is now affiliated to.
Value to health of T'ai Chi
Relaxes mind and body to combat the stress and strain
of modern day living.
Gently tones and strengthens muscles.
Improves balance and posture
Improves balance and posture
T'ai Chi Classes are held at the Vauxhall Centre on Wednesdays at 11.00am. Classes are open to all. If you are interested contact michele.taylor7@ntlworld.com
T'ai Chi focuses the mind as well as the body
People unable to move their upper or lower limbs, can still have a benefit. We've found that actually watching someone do the movements and visulising yourself in that persons place is beneficial.
Benefits include an indrease in respiration - people breathe more deeply and normally - and an increase in the range of movements that students are capable of.
The students at the Vauxhall Centre class certainly feel that T'ai Cji has been good for their health and wellbeing. Michelle Taylor says that, as well as total relaxation and meditation, T'ai Chi gives her a sense of more movement.
Ms Taylor, who is a wheelchair user, say that T'ai Chi makes it easier for to carry out the 40 exercise a day regime taught to her at a pain management clinic.
"I did'nt really do any exercise before I came here," she said.
"You feel that because you are in a chair that you can't do anything. Then you realise there are forms of exercise that you can do...and it does help".
Cyril Griffith has been attending the class since it first began:"I used to do karate before my accident. I should have taken up T'ai Chi long ago," he said. Since taking up T'ai Chi he has also started practising yoga.
The class also plays a supportive role. The students rely on each other to get the form right as well as having the class tutor as their guide.

Mark Wilson
"Here, if I give you the money will you bring me back a Thai prawn curry and some special fried rice," said my friend when I told him that I was going to Tai Chi. I laughed with a little embarrassment, not to worry,its not the first time I've met people with little or no idea as to what Tai Chi is.
I knew of it mainly after living with Chinese, Malay and Indian people when I lived in Malaya many moons ago. I tried briefly to explain about Tai Chi and its benefits, about the use of the body flow of energy and the points of energy, Dan Tien. He said, "Doesn't his brother cook in the golden palace Chinese restaurant?" I laughed at him for his deliberate ignorance. I explained that this is the bodies main input and collection point for its energy. "Nonsense", he says, "mines in my gut with three shredded wheat inside me, that's all the energy that you can get." I had to explain the sort of energy being talked about is a kind of life force of all the bodies functions and that the tai chi movements liberate and help this energy flow through the body. " What like electric wires?" he said. "To put it very crudely," was my reply, "it feels like a very gentle flow of electricity through the body". I explained that I was new to tai chi and was really enjoying it. He knew that on a Wednesday evening I taught water aerobics. "It's great!", he said, "that tune of yours by Queen, Radio Ga Ga, That s a really energetic exercise, and the Walk of Life really gets 'em going. "No", I said, "No, that's based on body lactoseiotsoduction and dispersal with the stretching and shrinking of the main muscles in the body frame. I went on to explain that T'ai Chi doesn't use wham bam techniques, but is a relaxed way of exercise.
Even if it were a contradiction in terms, I can do it, and I am paralysed right dowm m y left hand side because of a brain haemorrhage, and I feel like one of the crabs on the beach, on my holiday waving their claws.

Tune into T'ai Chi
This ancient Chinese discipline has never been more popular. Find out what it could do for you.
Skinny as a beanpole for all of my 60 years, I’ve never been a particularly sporty or muscular male. Arthritis had been seeping into my joints as well. Remedies such as fish oil and ginger – and less white wine – hadn’t helped. Yet over the past six months or so, nearly all my aches and pains have vanished. I can even swing my leg over my bike again. What accounts for this burst of strength and well being? I have touched heaven and earth. I have shaken my tail feathers and danced with rainbows. In short, like many fellow – Brits and millions around the world, I have discovered t’ai chi. Literally, t’ai means grand or limitless, and chi is your inner energy, the breath of life. Today, t’ai chi is explained as internal kung fu, or meditation in motion.
In cities from Hong Kong and San Francisco to Auckland and Copenhagen, I had seen people doing the strange looking, slow –motion exercises, always in a park or quiet place. And I’d heard about the benefits – according to an old saying, you attain the pliability of a child, the vitality of a lumberjack and the wisdom of a sage. I was sceptical. I have been tortured and bored by yoga and reduced to a knee –aching hobble by jigging; what could this Chinese stuff do? But my son, a fan of martial arts, pushed me into it. "You’ll find it soothing, Dad", he said. And so, in a church hall near our home in London, my wife and I stood barefoot in a big circle with about 25 others – students, grandmothers, businessmen, a top journalist and a teenage model. Instructor Kieran Hayes was a rugged – looking 31-year-old former rugby player. He didn’t say much, but just started some warm-up exercises and stretching, and we followed. "Now the eight pieces of the brocade", Hayes said, and we launched into a sequence developed by a Chinese general centuries ago to exercise his troops.The slow gliding movements with romantic names seemed weird and looked simple, but they were far from easy. For the next 90 minutes, as I parted the clouds and shot the golden eagle, my muscles trembled.
Surprisingly, though, there was no huff and puff. Flowing, dreamlike, from one position to the next, I could have been swimming in air. But there was much to think about….stand as if the head is suspended from the ceiling…bend the knees to lower the centre of gravity and stretch the spine…sink the shoulders…breath deep into the abdomen.
After a few twice- a- week classes and daily practises at home, I noticed something strange and wonderful. The juices were coming ack into my joints. My whole body was energised, my mental outlook ore calm and serene. "Have you been away?" friends asked. "You look so well", And it wasn’t just me. "My blood pressure is coming down and I feel so much better," Kate said. "I’m getting my spring back. "T’ai chi revolutionises the idea that exercise must be sweaty and painful to be effective. It’s not about force and strength, but flow. Sports and hard workouts tone the external muscles, but t’ai chi works on the whole body and even on the mind. Instead of leaving you ready to drop, it sets you up - ready for anything. According to Chinese folklore, t’ai chi was invented by a fourteenth century Taoist monk Zhang Sanfeng, who observed a crane fighting a snake in a pond. Struck by the ebb and flow of the action, both yielding to the other yet giving no ground, he adapted the movements into a martial art based on the Taoist principles of balance between negative and positive, give and take, push and pull. Followers discovered that doing the movements super slowly let them feel what was happening in their bodies. And so t’ai chi also became an exercise regimen. In the sessions my wife and I attended, for instance, we learned the short form, a sequence of 24 steps. Every step – white crane spreads its wings, wave hands like clouds and so on – tells a story in slow-motion body language. Yet every one, if executed quickly, also has a direct application in self-defence. When grasping the bird’s tail for instance, I amresponding to an attacker’s blow by swaying backwards, turning my hips and pulling him off balance. There are other sequences as well-the 32- step form using wooden sword, the 42-step international competition form, the 108-step long form, and "push hands", in which you test your stances in feather – light combat against a partner. Until the early 1800s tai chi was contained within a few families, but then a peasant called Yang Lu-Chan trained for years and began to teach the royal family and other sin Beijing. His "Yang style" became the root of all other styles and is the one most followed today. "Tai Chi has millions of devotees in Asia and its growth in the west is very rapid," says Anthony Goh, president of the USA Wushu-Kungfu Federation. "You don’t have to compete in a gym and you can keep on doing it for the rest of your life." In the UK there are at least 50 tai chi associations, some with more than 100 branches. Hamburg, Germany, has 125 teachers. China is pushing for tai chi to be included in the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing, and last September staged 10,000 tai chi athletes all dressed in white robes along the Great Wall of China to promote the sport. Remarkable claims are made for its health benefits, and many of these are proven. Researchers at Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield, for example, found that tai chi slows the heart rate and lowers blood pressure in heart attack victims. Now they’re investigating it as a way to help people live with heart problems and prevent further attacks. "Tai chi helps balance, so it’s especially useful for older people whose fear of falling makes them afraid to go out," says Leslie Wolfson at the University of Connecticut Health Centre. "In contrast to most exercise, which is difficult or painful, tai chi is easy and pleasant, so people don’t mind doing it." Both the US National Institute of Health and Harvard Women’s Health Watch acknowledged powerful effects of tai chi on a variety of ailments, from arthritis to heart problems, bone loss and ageing. Other studies suggest positive effects on diabetes, lower back pain and depression. "The bottom line" says Bill Douglas; the founder of World Tai Chi Day (April 24) "is that this stuff can really do you a lot of god." So how does it work? Tai chi instructors are notoriously taciturn, but May Tan, a gold medallist in the 1993 South- East Asian Games, explained it to me after an informal session at dawn in the Singapore Botanical Gardens. "The essence is to suck your breath down into your belly so it massages and boosts blood circulation to your organs," she said "Lower your centre of gravity too. Your centre is below your belly button, and lowering it by bending the knees while keeping the spine erect provides tremendous reserves of power and stability. Your internal strength comes from aligning the body, opening the joints and relaxing the muscles."How can an activity as slow and soft as tai chi be powerful?"Soft doesn’t mean limp," Tan said, "It means going with the flowbeing relaxed in the face of hardness. As the ancient Chinese masters put it, you are like a great river."Critical to tai chi is the way that you stand and hold yourself. Your body is always strongly rooted. You might withdraw to avoid an attacker, but your footing must be firmly grounded. I learned this back in London the day Kieran Hayes had us standin "white crane". All my weight was on one foot, with the toes ofthe other foot brushing the ground, one hand held out in front of my face as if stopping traffic and the other hand braced at my side.I was perfectly balanced. Then Hayes gripped my wrist with both hands and pulled down. Remarkably, even while standing on one leg, I could resist many pounds of force with just a tiny amount of energy. I had discovered the essence of tai chi.

John Dyson
April 04 Readers Digest.