Raymond Lee (Tai Chi Ray) is a Tai Chi teacher, martial arts practitioner, and writer who has been teaching and sharing Tai Chi in New York since 2017. He began practicing martial arts at the age of seven and grew up in a family with more than five generations of involvement in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Drawing from traditional martial arts, years of teaching experience, and a continuing interest in the human body and modern science, Ray explores Tai Chi through structure, coordination, awareness, natural movement, and the integration of body and mind. His work seeks not only to preserve traditional principles, but to make them understandable and meaningful in contemporary life.
Waiting for an elevator, standing in line, or sitting on a subway platform may seem like empty time. But these small pauses can reveal how quickly we reach for stimulation—and offer a simple opportunity to bring Tai Chi into everyday life.
Many beginners tell me they cannot “breathe into the belly.” But air never enters the belly in the first place. Diaphragmatic breathing is less about pushing the abdomen outward and more about allowing the diaphragm, ribs, and torso to move without unnecessary tension.
Wuji standing meditation may look like doing almost nothing. But when movement becomes quiet, habits that usually escape our attention can become surprisingly visible. I use Wuji not only to cultivate Song, but to establish a reference point we can carry into everyday life.
Tai Chi practice does not have to end when class is over. Explore three ways to bring Tai Chi into daily life through awareness, breathing, and movement.
You do not need to want to fight in order to understand martial intention. In Tai Chi, martial purpose helps explain why a movement is shaped the way it is—and gives the body a problem to solve rather than a posture merely to copy.
Push Hands is Tai Chi’s reality check. Movements may look correct when practiced alone, but a partner introduces changing force and reveals whether structure, relaxation, balance, sensitivity, and whole-body connection actually hold up.
Tai Chi does not let the opponent move first because it is passive. The deeper principle is to avoid committing before you have information: receive, sense direction and force, adapt, then respond without unnecessary resistance.
Balance is not simply a matter of stronger legs. Tai Chi walking slows down weight transfer, single-leg support, turning, and foot placement so we can become more aware of how balance is created—and how it begins to change.
Tai Chi walking may look like ordinary slow walking, but internally much more is happening. It trains how we stand, shift weight, balance on one leg, coordinate the whole body, and move with awareness.
A Tai Chi form is valuable, but memorizing a long sequence is not the same as learning Tai Chi. For beginners, I prefer to build the alphabet and grammar of movement first—then let the form become a place to use them.