This winter, PBS is airing a special one-hour introduction to Tai Chi with David-Dorian Ross. I highly recommend watching the episode, whether you have a lot or a little Tai Chi experience.

The way Ross presents basic concepts and teaches body alignment and choreography is simple and clear. Above all, he moves between classical explanations rooted in Chinese Medicine and Western, physiological-based explanations in an elegant and understandable manner.

Here is the trailer from PBS:

What New Practitioners Can Learn from "T'ai Chi for Health and Happiness"

If you have never done Tai Chi, or are new to the practice, David-Dorian Ross's approach will help you build a solid Tai Chi foundation.

He frames the practice around 3 main components:

• Freedom -- the freedom from limitations we all tend to impose on ourselves. Many Tai Chi players will tell you they feel more confident and willing to experience new things, which I believe comes from the self-exploration inherent in learning Tai Chi.
• Flow -- the phrase, "the mind moves the chi and the chi moves the blood" is a central teaching in Tai Chi and he explains what this actually means, through easy-to-feel exercises.
• Power -- an interesting choice of words here because the height of "power" in Tai Chi is classically described as "non-doing" or "non-effort". He does a nice job moving people out of the Western mindset that tension or strength equals power. From a Tai Chi perspective, strength only blocks flow.

For Experienced Practitioners (Especially Instructors)

Now, if you watch this program and you have more experience in Tai Chi, you'll pick up a whole other layer of information.

I especially enjoyed the way he translated concepts from the Classics in an accessible way:

• To make flow more tangible, he had people "Wave Hands Like Clouds" sitting down before they attempted to move arms and legs together.
• He described Song as the internal state your cat or your child takes on when they don't want to be picked up and showed people how to have "heavy feet".
• He introduced opening and closing in one of the first lessons on choreography.
• The very first principle he taught was spinal alignment in the broadest sense of spinal lengthening, but refined it several times as he was layering in more information.

Within the Tai Chi community, there is tendency to make the practice very obscure. People hide behind lofty concepts instead of giving clear explanations.

Of course, what you feel when you practice may be hard to explain, but I'm all in favor of seeing as much teaching as possible done in plain and direct language.

For that reason, I think this program is an excellent one for people to see as part of their introduction to Tai Chi.

Check you local PBS listing here to find out if T'ai Chi for Health and Happiness is airing soon in your area.