Anyone who's tried, or even just read about Tai Chi will have encountered talk of energy.
The Chinese paradigm of Qi and Jin can be confusing to western minds when first encountered, but we're really just discussing how we move our bodies. The language of Newtonian mechanics (ie: potential and kinetic energy) can serve just as well to describe the process of storing and releasing energy in the body, but to fully understand how this energy is expressed we need to consider something called the 8 Strengths/Energies which underpin all movements within Chen Style Tai Chi.
In our weekly sessions we often practice a standing exercise which cycles through the first 4 of these energies: Peng, Lu, Gi and An, whilst our advanced sessions expand the exercises to encompass the remaining 4 energies: Tsai, Lie, Zhou and Cow.
The following article from the Tai Chi Basics website does a great job of describing each of the 8 energies to help you better understand the purpose of the exercises we practice and how they relate to our Tai Chi forms:
