"You must understand that ordinary efforts do not count; only super-efforts count." -Gurdjieff

Our Group

Based in Cambridge, MA, we teach, to the best of our limited ability, the taiji system for inner development taught by Patrick Kelly, a close "inner school" student of Huang Xingxian. True inner growth requires long arduous struggle. Authentic taiji training sets up this struggle by constantly challenging our body to change in ways beyond its current capabilities.  

Our approach is most suited for the energetic and diligent who truly want to learn deeply, usually younger people who learn and change a bit more readily. It is possible but much more difficult for older beginners, who should only consider our group if prepared to make extraordinary effort to change familiar habits acquired over a lifetime. 

People with previous taiji or related experience should consider our group if willing to make the substantial effort needed to change familiar, comfortable habits in order to learn something new. We may be less suited for people who only want to reinforce, supplement, or validate their previous training.

Genuine taiji transmission requires deep, sincere, and sustained effort from both teacher and student. For the benefit of all involved, we ask that everyone watch a full class prior to joining, and then only join if able to commit to minimum attendance expectations outlined here.

Training Curriculum

· Huang Xingxian's 5 loosening exercises

· Zheng Manqing's 37 posture short form 

· Yang Chengfu's 108 posture long form

· 8 basic fixed pattern push hands

· guided meditation

Memorizing the general moves of the forms is not important or useful for our purposes; on the level of internal training there is zero difference between following a teacher in class or following one's own memory. Understanding specific details of the movements in depth and specifically recognizing and changing our individual movement patterns that we are comfortable with is much more difficult, and much more relevant for what we want to train. The traditional forms are just the framework we use to work on these movements because taiji is an intelligent system that has been highly refined over thousands of years. In fact taiji is perhaps the most refined way we are aware of to work on the "self-sensing" taught by the Sufis.

Our push hands exercises are cooperative partner exercises to discover and refine subtle aspects of how we interact with and react to external pressures in specific ways. They involve fairly extensive physical contact that should be gentle when trained properly, with no intention to compete, attempt to change/"teach" your partner, or compare how “good at tai chi” you are. The possibility of occasionally encountering a rough partner briefly is not completely avoidable, though we correct people if they are too rough and remove them from the class on the rare occasions they are too unwilling or unable to change.

Meditation is a key component of our practice. True meditation requires deep concentration beyond modern notions of "mindfulness" or simple quiet awareness (which we actually advise against), and its purpose is much higher and deeper than mere relief from the stresses of everyday life. One of the most important benefits of genuine taiji training is that it is an efficient way to bring the mind into a deeper state as one of the first prerequisite steps to a genuine meditation practice.

Instructor Bio

Our group was started in 2021 by Charlie Liu to develop a local community to seriously train with. Charlie has been exclusively training Patrick Kelly's approach since meeting PK in 2014, with particular support from Patrick’s students Tim Suh, Guillem Bernado, and Christine Schneider. 

Prior to meeting PK, Charlie studied with Liam Comerford (a student of Zheng Manqing) from 2001-2007 and Ben Lo (Luo Bangzhen) from 2008-2010. During those periods, Charlie also took a few classes with Maggie Newman, Ed Young, and Mark Lord. 

落魄红尘四十春，无为无事信天真

生涯只在乾坤鼎，活计惟凭日月轮

八卦气中潜至宝，五行光里隐元神

桑田改变依然在，永作人间出世人

-吕洞宾