I'm often asked about the relation if any between Yi Quan and Tai Chi, especially my own brand of Zheng style. I've answered this before but I'll review.

Basicallly, in a perfect world Yi Quan and Tai Chi are exactly the same thing. They really are, at bottom. Because both have the one single goal of training you to inject your MIND into your BODY. That's the only purpose of these arts. And you could go further and say the same about Xing Yi, Ba Gua and lots of others.

So then, the follw up question comes, why do I emphasize ZMQ Tai Chi so much, when it's no different than Yi Quan or anything else? I'll answer that with a question of my own: Do we live in a a perfect world?

Point being, that while the essence of Yi Quan is designed for that one purpose, in practice it rarely works out that way. Because of the raging hormones of the typical male animal who gets into martial arts in the first place, they wanna get all combative and physical and in your face and everything. That attitude extends into and stains even their (subconcious) approach to their most basic solo work such as standing meditation. Tenses them up. In short they don't understand relaxation (don't feel bad guys, neither does anybody else).

And without that pre-requisite they don't have much of a leg to stand on. They end up all tense and technique-y and structure-y and posture-y and anatomical same as everybody else.

Never theless, the underlying design and intent of Yi Quan is superb if only the later people had been able to really understand the founder's vision. But that never happens does it?

So for practical approach to the real shit, I've found ZMQ37 is best, peerless, bar none.