Hidden Hands Taiji

Tai Ji Quan, also known as “Tai Chi” in the West, is an ancient
martial and health art which has its origins in the Wudang mountains of China.

In Tai Ji we learn to fill our whole body with awareness by engaging our bodies with slow and continuous motions.
By following the principle “the soft can be more powerful than the hard”, we can learn how efficient motions and
the right build-up of structure can improve our health condition while teaching us various ways of self-defense.

Tai Chi itself is a term found originally in ancient Chinese philosophy that eventually became associated with an evolving system of principles and exercises aimed at extending the length and quality of life through the study and practice of Nature and its relevance to human life. Later, this was applied to military strategy and martial arts. l The Emperor Sage Fu Hsi, or Fu Xi (伏羲), who lived around 2,400BC, is attributed as the creator of the Tai Chi symbol (see picture) and the Ba Gua (八卦) “eight trigrams” symbols. Fu Hsi studied the cyclical changes of Nature and attempted to arrange knowledge of these cycles into an organised system. The Tai Chi symbol is, as it were, a statement about the reality of Nature, a reality as a continuous flow of cyclic change and blending. The circle represents the fullness of reality, within the circle are the principles of Yin (陰), represented by the dark area, and Yang (陽),the light area. These two areas complement each other in shape yet are opposite in shade.  Each contains some of the other, as seen in the two small circles. The shape of each area also conveys the notion that each flows into the other.
The Ba Gua symbol consists of eight arrangements of three solid or broken lines, often arranged around the Tai Chi symbol. Each symbol represents the major phases of cycles of Nature: heaven, earth, wind, water, mountain, thunder, fire and lake. These were further expanded, such as the heavenly cycle consisting of sun, moon, star, day, night, morning, evening, wind, thunder, rain and cloud phases; and the earthly cycle consisting of mountain, river, lake, swamp, fire, water, tree, flower and grass phases. These are symbolised by various combinations of the eight trigrams into pairs to form 64 hexagrams. The I Ching, or Yi Jing (易經), known also as The Book of Changes, is a collection of principles used to interpret Nature through the trigrams and hexagrams.