martial arts

"Martial arts are codified systems and traditions of combat practices, which are practiced for a variety of reasons: self-defense, competition, physical health and fitness, entertainment, as well as mental, physical, and spiritual development.
Although the term martial art has become heavily associated with the fighting arts of eastern Asia, it was originally used in regard to the combat systems of Europe as early as the 1550s. An English fencing manual of 1639 used the term in reference specifically to the "Science and Art" of swordplay. The term is ultimately derived from Latin, and means "arts of Mars," where Mars is the Roman god of war."


Of course, I am interested by Eastern martial arts ( Japanese Aikido and Chinese Taiji quan in the West it is called as Tai chi chuan). I trained aikido for two years as part of physical education in Toruń. The reason why I do not do this here in Poznań is that those classes were free and I could practice 7 hours / week .
Now I found a school of Tai chi chuan (Piotr Ziemba is a leader,he is a multiple champion of Polish and European Champions). The most people associate Tai chi chuan with the Chinese who doing the gentle movements in the parks. Of course they are right, but this is a very simplistic image of this martial art.
Style name appeared hundreds of years ago. Tai chi chuan is a term found in the Chinese philosophy of Yin Yang and Taoist philosophy. The concept of Tai chi, describes a world in which the original unity ( wuji ) emerged complementary elements of yin and yang. Tai chi chuan can  be translated as " fist / style taiji ".
Training includes the basic exercises, forms, or complex forms including weapons (eg, with a sword, spear, stick, halberd, two swords, hand fan, etc., exercise with a partner ( pushing hands ), teaching combat and self-defense, meditation and breathing exercises called as Qigong (chi kung). The training is significantly different from most martial arts because the most important in Tai chi chuan is the coordination between mind and body.
Tai chi chuan is divided into different styles, of which the most famous and popular are: Chen, Yang, Wu, Hao and Sun. Tai chi chuan training is usually associated with a slow movements of the exercise called as forms. However, many forms of Tai chi chuan combines both slow movements and dynamic.
I  exercise the Yang style, which is the basic style and I just started to exercise the Chen style, which was the first and the most difficult. To be honest, Tai chi chuan is for me one of the most important elements of my life at the moment. By training this, I feel that I finally found something that I love ;)
 
Here you have a link at the web side of this school of Tai chi chuan :http://www.taichi.com.pl/