This is 'The Great Ultimate', the art of tai chi chuan. It teaches you to balance your life, it improves your fitness and  helps you to be calm and confident. You will discover your inner strength and develop an overall feeling of well being.

Our classes are friendly and we take a pretty straightforward approach to teaching. The group is of mixed ability and age, with more advanced students happy to help newcomers.

New students benefit from a free first lesson which serves as an introduction and shows them the scope of tai chi. Following that we aim to teach the ‘form’ – the slow movements that  everyone associates with tai chi. This our ‘tool’; the form  trains you - your body - to move as one and is where we develop all of the principles and concepts that make tai chi a great system.

Photography: Tim Wayling - Toronto

The object of tai chi is to connect ourselves with ourselves. All of the benefits which you hear about – great exercise, improved balance, better health, lower stress levels and so on – come from the internal aspects. So from the first lesson we work to discover and develop our inner strength.

As far as self defence is concerned – after all tai chi chuan is a martial art – students who wish to can learn how effective a holistic and soft approach can be in this respect.