Stop promoting tai chi as being easy and simple. Tai chi is neither easy nor simple. Promoting it as such sets people up for disappointment and failure.
It seems to be everywhere at the moment, this need to promote our beautiful, complex, elegant exercise art as simple. Why?
When people decide to take up an activity or exercise, do they first think, “I want to do something simple?” I don’t think so. I think they want to do something enjoyable, something interesting, something that makes them feel good in body and mind, something that gets their mind off their daily stresses.
When people take up walking, or yoga, or pilates, do they do it because it’s easy? No. They do it for the benefits and because it’s enjoyable (or because a medico told them to). Being easy or simple might not even enter the equation.
Why do so many tai chi instructors and masters feel they need to promote tai chi as being easy? It’s been done for decades of course, it’s not new. But it does seem like more and more people have jumped on this bandwagon recently.
A major problem with this promotion is that beginners to tai chi join a class in good faith, thinking that it will be easy for them to learn. They are then surprised to learn it’s nothing of the sort. This leads to them feeling embarrassed, let down, and like there’s something wrong with them. “I’m hopeless, I can’t remember these easy movements.” You’re not hopeless, those movements are harder than they look.
Tai chi is a martial art that is hundreds of years old. There are long traditional forms that are still practised today. These forms might take 1 or 2 years to learn properly. And when I use the word “properly”, I mean that the students can practice the form by themselves and get it mostly correct. The movements are in the right order and are executed with good body dynamics within the parameters of the practitioners own physical condition.
Coming a bit more recently, the most widely practiced form is Yang Tai Chi 24-Form. Also called Beijing 24, or Simplified Yang Tai Chi 24 Form. This form is now 70 years old, having been created in 1956. It’s not simple at all, but it is simplified from the longer traditional forms and reduced to roughly 24 movements (depending on how they are counted) from the original 108.
More recently again we have forms like 8- or 10-Form Tai Chi created in the early 2000s. These are simplified further in that they use a handful of movements from the original 108 and repeat them to both sides to create a symmetrical form. Tai Chi 10-form is still not easy or simple.
If you strip away all the nuance and subtleties and ignore the martial applications, as has been done for many newer forms, then I’d argue that this is simplified, but still not simple. But also, possibly not proper tai chi either. Tai chi is a martial art. If there is no understanding of the martial applications within each movement, then it’s not really tai chi. It’s still going to be good exercise and probably enjoyable, but not true tai chi.
Recent AI advertisements have contributed towards this simple and easy trend, but as I’ve mentioned, many practitioners have been promoting tai chi this way for decades.
Tai Chi is not for everyone. Just like jogging doesn’t suit everyone and dance classes don’t suit everyone and yoga doesn’t suit everyone. There’s always going to be some drop off in enrolments when people learn more about tai chi and decide it’s not for them. That doesn’t have to have anything to do with whether it’s easy or not though. The nature of the activity is simply not for everyone and we shouldn’t try to make it so.
I think it’s time to stop promoting tai chi as easy, and time to start promoting tai chi for what it truly is: tai chi is an ancient exercise art with a long history. The health benefits are many and huge. Tai chi is elegant and impressive to watch. It is delightful to practice, but also challenging. It takes a long time to learn properly. It is worth every minute of that time invested.
Published 14th August 2026