Extending Tai Chi for Health Forms to Better Meet Participants' Needs*

Extending a Tai Chi form can increase the physical and mental challenge, help to keep participants' interest, and enhance the meditative quality of your practice.

SHARING TAI CHI

Johnny

8/22/20262 min read

At the 2015 annual workshop in Forest Grove, Oregon I had the honor and pleasure to share a suite with the late great Richard Link. In those days Richard was a Senior Trainer, soon to become Master Trainer, attending the pre-conference workshop to help facilitate the inaugural Tai Chi for Rehabilitation Instructor/Leader’s Course. In spite of his experience and accomplishments, Richard was incredibly humble and very welcoming of me, a relative newbie at only his second weeklong. We had many an earnest talk about Tai Chi as well as plenty of laughs, and maybe a wee bit of bourbon. Richard has since departed this earthly realm for the eternal training hall, but something about which he spoke passionately way back then has stuck with me ever since.

Simple forms have tremendous power, especially Tai Chi for Rehabilitation.

Richard will tell you all about it.

Master Trainer Richard Link on Teaching Tai Chi to People with Health Issues on YouTube.

I roomed with Richard before this remarkable chapter in his life occurred, yet already in 2015, he had discovered the power of TCR. Richard told me about one group of his participants who were managing chronic health conditions with regular instruction in and practice of Tai Chi for Rehabilitation. As their health and wellness improved, the participants craved greater physical and deeper mental challenges. Instead of teaching them a new form, Richard introduced a systematic study of the Tai Chi principles to keep his participants’ interest and doubled the length of the form to continue to build his participants' strength, breathing capacity, and stamina.

In Tai Chi for Rehabilitation, after doing the Cloud Hands (left), Harmonizing Yin and Yang (both sides) and Cloud Hands (right), Richard and his participants would pause in the middle for three Open and Close, and then continue the form to the other direction, Cloud Hands (right), Harmonizing Yan and Yang (both sides) and Cloud Hands (left), all while juggling Dr. Lam’s six Tai Chi Principles. Careful you don’t drop all those Chi balls!

Doubling TCR by doing it to the other side creates a mirror-image form whose practice will require more space, twice as much time and might be more than some participants can handle. You will need to listen closely to your group with both eyes and ears, and all of your heart, before you introduce this simple yet challenging approach.

I’ve taught TCR classes to female inmates at the County Jail, and I’ve shared TCR with $500 per day spa clients in Lake Geneva. I’ve led seventy children through this form while atop a picnic table at Make Arthritis Stop Hurting Camp and held weekly free on the Geneva Lake shoreline classes featuring TCR. Its versatility is as remarkable as its power.

Give Tai Chi for Rehabilitation a try, especially if you are skeptical of simpler forms. Simplicity can fast track your appreciation and application of the Tai Chi Principles. And when you and your participants are ready, increase the physical demands of the form with the extended version of TCR.

And as always, enjoy your teaching and practice!

* This article originally appeared in Dr Lam's Tai Chi and Health Newsletter- Issue Number 298, June 2026

Extending Tai Chi for Health Forms to Better Meet Participants' Needs*

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