The Complete Guide to Chen Style Tai Chi

I have been practicing Tai Chi every single day since 1970. That’s not a selling point, it’s context. Because everything I’m going to tell you in this guide comes from lived experience, not theory. I practiced Wu style, then Yang style, then Chen style. I studied under Grandmaster Wang Xi’an in Chen Village, China for ten years. I spent 35 years as a chiropractor using Tai Chi as therapy with every patient I treated.

When people ask me what Chen style Tai Chi is, I could give them a dictionary definition. But a definition limits something that, by its very nature, has no limits. The Chinese word Taiji literally means “grand ultimate,” which means unlimited. The moment you try to fit it into a sentence, you’ve already undersold it.

So instead of a definition, let me tell you what it actually is: what it feels like, what it does, where it comes from, and whether it’s right for you. This is the guide I wish I’d had when I was starting.

What Chen Style Tai Chi Actually Is

The first thing most people notice about Tai Chi is the slowness. They see people moving in a park, quietly, unhurriedly, and they make an assessment: gentle exercise for older people. Relaxing, maybe. Not serious.

That assessment is wrong, and the only way to correct it is to actually practice.

Here’s what the slowness is for. When you move quickly, you lose the feeling. You execute the movement but you miss what’s happening inside it. When you slow down, and I mean really slow down, your awareness increases. You start to feel things you’ve never felt before: the resistance of air against your skin, the subtle misalignments in your joints, the places in your body where tension has been living for so long you stopped noticing it.

This sensitivity is the foundation of everything. We call it “listening with the skin.” It develops gradually through practice, and it never stops developing. After 57 years of daily practice, I still find new layers in it.

Chen style Tai Chi is a complete mind-body system. It works every muscle and every joint. It trains the nervous system. It develops what we call whole body power, the ability to move as a single integrated unit rather than as a collection of disconnected parts. It is simultaneously a martial art, a health practice, and a moving meditation. None of those three things is separate from the others.

And one more thing: the original Chen style training is not just slow movement. That’s what people see because Tai Chi has been simplified and watered down so many times over so many decades. The authentic system is slow and fast, soft and hard. It has martial applications. It has health applications. It is a complete system, and we’ll get to why that matters when we talk about Chen style versus other styles.

For a deeper look at what the practice actually feels like from the inside, read What is Chen Style Tai Chi?

Where It Comes From: The Origin and Lineage of Chen Family Tai Chi

Go back to 17th century China. Most people lived in small farming villages in the countryside, simple communities where families grew their crops, raised their children, and practiced their family style of martial art. The martial art was for protection. Bandits were real. Law enforcement was not.

The Chen family village was one of these communities. Like every village family, they had their own martial art passed down through generations. But in the mid-1600s, a member of that family changed everything.

General Chen Wangting was a military commander with decades of real combat experience. He was also, unusually for a farmer-soldier, deeply educated in traditional Chinese medicine, Taoist philosophy, and the classical texts including the Tao Te Ching and yin-yang theory. When he returned to the village after his military service, he took the Chen family martial art and transformed it, integrating his combat experience with his understanding of philosophy, energy circulation, and health.

What he created was Tai Chi. The Chen family system. The original.

For the next two hundred years, the Chen family kept it within the family. If your name wasn’t Chen, you didn’t learn it. That changed in the 1800s when, for the first time, an outsider was permitted to study. His name was Yang Luchan. He eventually left and created his own system based on what he’d learned: Yang style Tai Chi. We’ll come back to that.

The lineage matters because this is how the art survives intact. In each generation, a small number of students are chosen, selected for their character, their physical ability, and above all their willingness to work. These students are trained intensively, sometimes for decades, until the current masters are confident they can carry the art forward without diluting it. Then the responsibility passes.

My teacher, Grandmaster Wang Xi’an, was the 19th generation lineage holder. I am the 20th. That chain runs unbroken from General Chen Wangting in the 1600s to the students I teach today.

I spent ten years training with Grandmaster Wang Xi’an in Chen Village. Private sessions, five hours a day, two classes daily. His teaching method was almost entirely physical: demonstration, repetition, hands-on correction. He would place my hand on his shoulder, his hip, his knee, and move so I could feel from the inside what was happening. No amount of verbal instruction could have communicated what that did.

When I arrived, I had thirty years of daily practice behind me. Within minutes of our first session I felt like a beginner. Not in a discouraging way, in the best possible way. The depth of what he carried was staggering. I wanted to give everything I had to learn from him. Which is what I did.

Why Chen Style, Not Yang Style, Not Any Other Style

I want to be careful here, because there are people who have practiced Yang style for thirty or forty years and take great pride in their lineage and their teachers. I respect that. But you asked the question, and the honest answer requires a real comparison.

I have practiced Wu style, Yang style, and Chen style, all intensively, all daily, all under what I believed were highly qualified teachers. So this isn’t theory.

I used to demonstrate the difference to students this way. I would show them Single Whip, a movement that exists in both Yang and Chen style, first in Yang style, then in Chen style. Without saying which was which or which was “better.” Then I’d ask them what they saw and, more importantly, what they felt watching each one.

Every time, without exception, the response was the same: the Chen version looked more complex, more alive. More circles, more spirals, more detail. Like something was actually happening inside it.

Here’s the technical reason for that. Chen style Tai Chi is built on three foundational principles, what I call the three pillars: intention, letting go, and silk reeling. The vertical circles of Chen style make all three visible. You can see the rising and falling, the yielding, the spiraling movement through the whole body. When I practice Yang style, I feel two of those three pillars are essentially absent. The circles are more horizontal. The silk reeling, which is the continuous spiraling movement of arms, torso, and legs, is minimal. The letting go, the sinking, the yielding quality that gives Tai Chi its internal power, I never felt that in Yang style. Not once.

My analogy: the difference between playing chopsticks on the piano and playing a Beethoven sonata. Both are piano. One has been simplified to the point where most of what makes the instrument extraordinary is no longer present.

What does someone lose by practicing a watered-down version? Almost everything, in my view. Tai Chi has to be alive. It has to breathe. When you strip out the vertical circles, the silk reeling, the true letting go, you have movement. You don’t have Tai Chi.

For a deeper exploration of the principles that make Chen style distinct, read The 3 Principles of Chen Tai Chi and Tai Chi Silk Reeling.

The Three Pillars: Intention, Letting Go, and Silk Reeling

Every physical movement you make begins as a thought. Before your arm lifts, there is a thought, unnamed, instant, unconscious, that initiates it. In Chen style Tai Chi, we bring that process into awareness. That is the first pillar: intention.

The intention leads the energy. The energy moves the body. This sounds simple. It takes years to understand it deeply, and decades to embody it fully. But it begins immediately. From your very first practice session, you are training this relationship between mind and movement.

The second pillar is letting go. Some people call this relaxation, but that word doesn’t cover it. Relaxation suggests going limp. Letting go means something more active and more precise: releasing stored tension from specific areas of the body through directed intention.

Most of us carry years of accumulated tension, in the shoulders, the lower back, the hips, the jaw. We’ve stopped feeling it because it’s been there so long. In the practice of Tai Chi, you develop the sensitivity to find these areas and the skill to release them. Traditional Chinese medicine says all sickness and pain is caused by blockage in the circulation of vital energy. Whether you accept that framework or not, the practical result is the same: releasing chronic tension in the body has profound effects on pain, mobility, and overall health.

For the martial side: a blockage anywhere in the body disconnects that part from the whole. You cannot use whole body power through a shoulder that’s frozen. Every place you hold tension, you cut the body into pieces. Letting go is not passive. It’s the prerequisite for everything else.

The third pillar is silk reeling, the continuous spiraling movements of the whole body. Arms, torso, legs, all moving in coordinated spirals rather than linear directions. Imagine a basketball floating in a bathtub. You put one finger on top and try to push it straight down. It pops away, because the round surface deflects any linear force. Now imagine your body responding to incoming force the same way: not resisting it, not collapsing to it, but spiraling around it. The force is neutralized not by opposing it but by moving with it and redirecting it.

This is how Tai Chi works as a martial art. And it is also why it works so well for the body. The spiral movements pump synovial fluid into the joints, decompress the spine, and keep every part of the body moving in the directions it was designed to move.

When all three pillars are working together, intention generating letting go, letting go enabling silk reeling, the practice feels effortless. Not easy. Effortless. Like the movement is happening through you rather than by you. That’s the direction. You spend a lifetime moving toward it.

See also: The 3 Principles of Chen Tai Chi, Wuji: The Art of Stillness, and Tai Chi: The Ultimate in Relaxation.

What It Does for Your Body: A Chiropractor’s View

People ask me what Tai Chi is good for. I find it easier to answer what it’s not good for, because I haven’t found that yet.

I practiced chiropractic for 35 years. Every patient I treated, back pain, knee pain, shoulder restrictions, digestive problems, sleep disorders, chronic fatigue, got the same homework: specific Tai Chi movements prescribed for their condition. The patients who did the work consistently got better faster and stopped needing treatment. That observation, repeated thousands of times over three and a half decades, is why I eventually stopped practicing chiropractic and became a full-time Tai Chi teacher.

I am 72 years old. I take no medication. I have no chronic pain. I sleep well. I wake up every morning with energy. My flexibility is, by objective measure, well beyond what most people half my age can do. I don’t say this to impress you. I say it because I am my own longest-running clinical study, and the results are consistent.

The joints. Gravity compresses our joints continuously. Over decades, this wears away cartilage, reduces synovial fluid, and leads to the arthritic changes most people accept as inevitable aging. The rotational movements in Tai Chi, particularly in the hips, knees, and spine, actively pump synovial fluid back into the joint spaces, increasing the space between bones and reversing this compression. Hip replacement surgery has become enormously common. Two minutes of hip rotation practice daily may eliminate the need for it. That’s not an exaggeration.

The spine. When your posture aligns with gravity, the pressure on your intervertebral discs drops dramatically. One of the first things we work on in Chen style is spinal alignment, finding the position where gravity works with you rather than against you. Back pain is often not structural damage. It’s the accumulated effect of being out of alignment, year after year, until something gives. Correct the alignment through daily practice, and the pain frequently resolves on its own.

The nervous system. This is where the chiropractic training becomes particularly relevant. The autonomic nervous system has two branches: the sympathetic, which accelerates everything including heart rate, stress response, and acid production, and the parasympathetic, which calms and restores. Most people in modern life are chronically sympathetic-dominant. The solution most people reach for, going to the gym and exhausting themselves until the stress releases, works temporarily and then requires repetition the next day. Tai Chi directly strengthens the parasympathetic side. It doesn’t burn off tension, it dissolves it. The effect accumulates rather than resets.

Mental health. The mind and body are not separate. Chronic physical tension produces mental stress. Chronic mental stress produces physical tension. Tai Chi addresses both simultaneously, every time, in every practice session. The daily practice of letting go in the body trains the same capacity in the mind. When someone verbally attacks you, the same skill applies: take a breath, sink down, don’t resist, don’t collapse. Let it pass through. This is not metaphor. It is a transferable skill that develops through physical practice.

For more on the health dimension, see Tai Chi and Preventive Health Care, Tai Chi for Arthritis, and The Tai Chi Nervous System Connection.

The Honest Truth About Learning Chen Style Tai Chi

I’m going to be direct with you here, because I think you deserve honesty more than you deserve encouragement.

You need three things to learn Chen style Tai Chi: the desire to learn, a qualified teacher, and daily practice. Of those three, daily practice is the most important. Not weekly classes. Not three sessions a week. Every day.

There’s a Chinese saying I return to constantly: one day’s effort produces one day’s results. Miss a day and you’ve taken a step backward. This is not motivational rhetoric. It’s how this kind of learning actually works.

Most people who take Tai Chi classes go once or twice a week, stand behind the teacher, follow along, and leave. They never practice on their own. And they never really learn Tai Chi. They learn to mimic someone else’s movements in a group setting. That’s not the same thing. Until you practice alone, completely alone, with no one to follow, you don’t own the form. You’re borrowing it.

The most common question I get from people thinking about starting: how long does it take to learn? My answer is always the same: from now on. That question tells me you’re already in a hurry, and there is no way to learn Tai Chi in a hurry. The fastest way to learn it is to take your time.

Pablo Casals, widely considered the greatest classical cellist who ever lived, was interviewed at age 90. The interviewer noted that he still practiced three hours every day. Why? Casals smiled and said: “Because I feel like I’m starting to make some progress.”

Let that settle for a moment. Then ask yourself again how long it takes.

Grandmaster Wang Xi’an, a man whose skill I have never seen equaled, who spent his entire life perfecting Chen family Tai Chi, who studied under the greatest masters of his generation, told me once that his only regret was that he hadn’t practiced more diligently.

The form is your teacher. Not me, not any other instructor. The form teaches you how to move, how to let go, how to pay attention. Every time you practice it, there is something new to find in it. That never stops. After 57 years of daily practice, I still approach the form every morning with the intention to do it better than yesterday.

The other thing I want to address: there is no such thing as practicing wrong. If you’re practicing with genuine intention, you’re doing it right. I’ve had students tell me they didn’t practice because they were afraid of reinforcing a mistake. That’s the biggest excuse in the world, and it is just that, an excuse. Step forward with the wrong foot, lift your hand to the wrong height, you’ll correct it. The correction comes from repetition, not from waiting until you’re certain.

What keeps people going when it gets difficult? The same thing that started them: the value. The question is never whether something is difficult or easy. The question is whether it’s worth learning. If the answer is yes, then the difficulty is irrelevant, because you’re going to learn it regardless.

The movements that challenge you most are the ones that give you the most. That’s the same on a piano and in a Tai Chi form.

Related reading: Tai Chi Form: How to Practice and Chen Tai Chi First Routine.

Who Is Chen Style Tai Chi For?

I have taught in hospital cancer wards. I have taught in a clinic for young women with eating disorders. I have taught at a youth prison in Canada. I have taught Olympic athletes, professional tennis players, and professional basketball players. I have taught in senior living facilities where every student in the room was in a wheelchair. I have taught in the Liberty City ghetto in Miami and in yacht clubs in the same city. I have taught yoga teachers, martial artists from other styles, dancers, meditators, children as young as three, and adults starting for the first time in their late seventies.

In every single one of those settings, people found value.

So when you ask me who Chen style Tai Chi is for, my answer is: everyone. Not as a polite generalization, but as a conclusion drawn from a lifetime of teaching every conceivable type of person in every conceivable type of circumstance.

Age is not a barrier. In Chen Village, children begin learning when they can stand up, around age three. And in the same village, you see practitioners in their eighties and nineties moving every morning with full range of motion, no restrictions, no pain, with big smiles on their faces. You cannot say that about any sport. Western sports, weightlifting, running, football, basketball, develop the body in one direction and then destroy it. The medical profession has created an entire specialty called sports medicine. Think about that name. It exists because sports cause injuries. Tai Chi does not.

Physical condition is not a barrier. If someone cannot stand, they practice seated. The principles still apply. The benefits still accumulate.

Background is not a barrier. You don’t need martial arts experience, athletic ability, musical training, or any particular kind of body. You need the desire to practice.

The stereotype that Tai Chi is for old people is one I understand. I even held a version of it myself before I started. You see slow, gentle movement and you make an assumption. But that assumption is based on watching, not feeling. The moment you actually practice, the assumption dissolves. Every person who has genuinely committed to Chen style Tai Chi and practiced it daily has, at some point, said the same thing: I wish I had started sooner.

See also: Tai Chi for Children, Martial Arts and Longevity, and 12 Reasons to Do Tai Chi.

How I Got Here: A Personal Note

I started because a friend of mine got beaten up by five bullies at school when I was 15. I was standing right there and couldn’t do anything. That afternoon I rode my bike around the neighborhood until I found a karate school. That night I walked in the door.

I knew in that moment. Not thought. Knew. This was my life’s work.

I didn’t know then that it would lead to Tai Chi, to yoga, to chiropractic, to ten years in Chen Village, to teaching in thirty countries, to standing in front of Grandmaster Wang Xi’an at age 45 and realizing that thirty years of practice was just the beginning. I didn’t know it would become the organizing principle of every single day of my life for the next 57 years and counting.

I can’t say I chose this direction. It feels more like it chose me. But I can say this: I have never woken up and not wanted to practice. I go to sleep every night thinking about the morning. That feeling has not diminished in 57 years. If anything, it has deepened.

That’s what I want for you. Not the credentials, not the lineage, not even the health benefits, though those will come. That feeling. That thing where you wake up and the first thought is something you genuinely love doing.

Tai Chi gave me that. It can give it to you too.

Read more about my background and training on the About page, or if you’re ready to begin, start here.

Ready to Begin?

If this guide has made you curious enough to take the next step, here’s where to go:

• Start Here, the best entry point for beginners
• What is Chen Style Tai Chi?, a deeper look at the practice itself
• The 3 Principles of Chen Tai Chi, intention, letting go, silk reeling explained
• Immersions, train with Dr. Bacher in person
• How to Practice the Tai Chi Form, practical guidance for daily practice

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Chen style Tai Chi?

Chen style Tai Chi is the original Tai Chi system, created by General Chen Wangting in 17th century China. Unlike simplified modern versions, authentic Chen style includes slow and fast movements, soft and hard techniques, martial applications, and three foundational principles: intention, letting go, and silk reeling.

What is the difference between Chen style and Yang style Tai Chi?

Chen style is the original system from which Yang style was derived in the 1800s. Chen style retains all three foundational principles including silk reeling and vertical circles, while Yang style has simplified these elements considerably. Chen style practitioners describe it as living and breathing where Yang style feels more static by comparison.

How long does it take to learn Chen style Tai Chi?

There is no fixed timeframe. Chen style Tai Chi is a lifelong practice. The fastest way to learn it is through daily practice from the very first day. There is a Chinese saying that captures it well: one day’s effort produces one day’s results.

What are the health benefits of Chen style Tai Chi?

Chen style Tai Chi benefits include reduced joint pain and arthritis, spinal decompression, improved balance, strengthened parasympathetic nervous system function, reduced stress, better sleep, increased energy, and improved flexibility. Benefits accumulate through daily practice over time.

Who is Chen style Tai Chi suitable for?

Chen style Tai Chi is suitable for everyone regardless of age, physical condition, or background. Children as young as three practice in Chen Village, and practitioners in their eighties and nineties continue daily. It can be adapted for people in wheelchairs or with serious health conditions.

What are the three principles of Chen style Tai Chi?

The three principles of Chen style Tai Chi are intention, letting go, and silk reeling. Intention means every movement begins as a thought in the mind. Letting go means releasing stored tension from the body through directed awareness. Silk reeling refers to the continuous spiraling movements of the arms, torso, and legs that give Chen style its distinctive internal power.

What is lineage and why does it matter in Chen style Tai Chi?

Lineage is the unbroken chain of transmission from one generation of masters to the next, stretching back to General Chen Wangting in the 17th century. It matters because the art is so detailed and refined that it can only be transmitted correctly through direct hands-on teaching. Without authentic lineage transmission, key elements of the art are lost or diluted with each generation.

Is Tai Chi only for older people?

No. This is one of the most common misconceptions about Tai Chi. In Chen Village, children begin learning at age three. The practice benefits every age group and is particularly valuable for young people precisely because the benefits compound over decades of daily practice.

One day’s effort produces one day’s results. Begin today.