Tai Chi's not lame, you are! Its not the art that makes the man, its the man that makes the art.
But a newbie such as yourself wouldn't understand that key truth.  You gotta go deep son. Good luck.

I like the idea of Tai Chi being for both health and fighting.

My sifu was used to teaching only older folks tai chi for exercise and health benefits, but when I, a younger twenty-something, expressed interest in learning the more practical self-defense applications, he talked about his time studying under a grandmaster in  was elated to add strength training and explosive fists and palms to my training regimen. He was just over 60 but was still unmoveable and could easily toss people around. I'm grateful to have had him for a teacher.

shout out to all the aunties in the park keeping Tai Chi alive

I got a walking tai chi ad in the middle of this

I enjoy practicing Tai Chi,it actually helped save my life especially with my PTSD.The moving meditative practices of it really helped with not only my cultivation of my Chi but also my mental health and wellbeing 🙏🏽☯️🙏🏽

Tai chi for health, tai chi chuan for martial art. Any tai chi master who gets in a ring he must do free sparring or lose.

As someone who has had to break up fights for a decade and a half, I can say that the pushing hands in Tai Chi are amazingly effective in breaking up fights.

14:22 they pulverized the core, while preserving the rind

Great video. I trained with a Tai Chi instructor a few times and he was amazing. He was half my size and in remission from cancer. Despite the fact that I had been doing judo for 15 years as was considerably stronger than him, I could barely move him. He just used to push me around like a child. It was incredible.

I'm based in Taiwan and have been a practitioner of several styles of Chinese martial arts, including Taiji, for almost 30 years.  And I'd like to point out that the forms of competitive push hand shown here are actually a modern invention.  It was created by the Chinese government in the 1950s in an effort to promote Taiji as a sport.  

To many traditionalists, competitive push hand is merely a modern grappling sport as opposed to a martial art.  The real old-school Taiji also includes strikes, kicks, dim mak, and explosive force generation (fajin), but the vast majority of Taiji practitioners are either unaware or uninterested in the combative aspect of the art.  Knowledgeable teachers who possess those skills are also few and far between.

Let us remember that practicing actual fighting is socially awkward to do in a park, while the morning stretches and forms are acceptable. So, we see the 'health' aspect in public, but the other aspects are practiced in private.

Tai Chi was my first martial art, got me into the arts, more than 20 years ago. I still train forms, and it was the only exercise I got during my battles with cancer. Cool vid, Tai Chi has a special place in my heart.

This is good, two minor things stood out to me.  Firstly, Taiji is not a grappling art, push hands is a very important fundamental training in taiji, but taiji also has striking, chin na, and weapons and is meant to address all aspects of fighting.
Also, in the clip of Jet Li, I don't think he is talking about the martial art taijichuan, but the philosophical concept of taiji that the art is currently named after.

Go to any A&E and you will see a lot of elderly people who just fell over and fractured something. It's the main reason people die, losing balance and falling over. So in this context, tai chi, even 'just' park tai chi, is the ultimate form of self defence.

30 years taiji practitioner here.
i like the angle from which you perceive and represent taiji very much.
a very interesting mosaic part of the whole piece of art.thank you.

I've been doing Tai Chi since I was 18 and I'm 43 now. I got started because a woman who was trained by my Sifu and I didn't know she was the second best in the school 😂 pushed me around easily doing push hands. 😂

I was hooked after that it amplified a lot of my senses plus yes it did make me feel way calmer in more stressful situations.

I did tai chi. The slow movements form is just one piece of it, like kata is a piece of karate. They're not the same, though. There were also spear, sabre, and sword forms. There were partner drills, pushing hands, applied moves in self defence. There's punching, kicking, throws, and joint locks. There were secret exercises. Tai chi helped me in standing bjj. It became easier to sense what the opponent was doing and redirect, to sense your structure and theirs, to exploit a lack of balance without having to commit. Pushing hands is a good partner exercise. If you gain the upper hand, you can let your partner find a way to ease out of it instead of going for points and you both learn much more than from fast pulls and shoves. The slow form is good for coordination, balance, and body awareness that you bring to drills and self defence. It is also reinforcement and exploration of the moves you did in drills and self defence.

I love that you defer to people that know more than you. Makes your videos far more engaging and trustworthy.

I absolutely love the explanation tags you put under their names. You have an Aussie sense of humour

I don’t really fight anymore, but I do lean on Tai Chi principles at work, especially when handling spicy cats and dogs at the shelter 😅. It’s honestly been super effective and keeps them calmer when I’m giving meds or doing behavior work etc