The Tai Chi Notebook

In this episode of the Tai Chi Notebook Podcast I’m joined by Chris Paines, a BJJ black belt from Staffordshire in the UK.

Chris gained a level of fame in the BJJ world for a seminar he taught at a BJJ Globetrotters camp called “How to Defend Everything”, which was wildly successful, especially when that seminar went on YouTube. It got over 100,000 views.

Chris has gone on to develop a system for teaching Jiu-Jitsu that he calls Elements and which can be found on the BJJ Fanatics website under the name ‘Strategic Guard Passing and Pinning’.

You can also subscribe to Chris’ Patreon which is called In Theory BJJ. I’ve known Chris for a few years now and rolled with him and attended his seminars a number of times and I've always found his ideas original, innovative and inspiring.

In Theory BJJ: https://www.patreon.com/intheorybjj

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/intheorybjj/

The Tai Chi Notebook blog: https://thetaichinotebook.com/

In this episode Richard Moon, a lifelong martial artist and performer, shares his journey from playing in a jug band and performing with bands like the Grateful Dead to becoming deeply involved in yoga and eventually Aikido, which he encountered by accident and learned as a "way of life more than a way of fighting." 

Richard Moon describes developing a "very freestyle, jazz-oriented approach" to Aikido, which eventually led to corporate coaching with Chris Thorsen and international peace building initiatives with Louise Diamond and a $30 million project in Bosnia funded by Dan Whalen. Richard Moon emphasized the importance of centering, intentional transformation, and harmonizing with the universal movement through practices like the "universal breath" and the "drop back, sink open" technique, concluding with O Sensei's teaching that "Aikido is the realization of love."

Episode 41: Teaching Tai Chi as a Martial Art with Nick Walser and Ian Kendall

In this episode I talk to two Wudang Tai Chi teachers from Brighton, UK: Nick Walser and Ian Kendall. Both students of the late Dan Docherty, they have continued to practice the tai chi that Dan taught them and developed a new training system called 5 Snake.

5 Snake is a unique and powerful method for finding flow, resilience, and calm through partnered close- quarter practice, and they're here to tell you all about it.

Find out more at: https://5snake.co.uk/ and 5 Snake on Instagram, YouTube and Facebook.

Read my latest blogs on tai chi and martial arts at: www.thetaichinotebook.com

Welcome to episode 40 of the Tai Chi Notebook Podcast!

Today we’re joined by my friend Benjamin Palmer. Ben has been running a Xing Yi Quan training group in deepest darkest Somerset for a good few years now, but Ben has also been training Mishima Kempo, an eclectic Japanese martial art and is thinking of starting a class in that soon.

We share the same Xing Yi teacher, Damon Smith who has been a previous guest on my show.

I visited Ben’s Xing Yi class a couple of weeks ago to teach his group some grappling and afterwards we sat down for a chat, and a nice cup of tea, so here we are in Ben’s kitchen!

Links:

Mishima Kempo: http://mishimakempo.com/

FoxFist: https://foxfist.com/

Xing Yi UK: http://www.xingyi.org.uk/

My BJJ book, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: The Ultimate Illustrated Guidebook, co-authored with Seymour Yang is now on pre-sale at meerkatsu.com. The first edition will only be on sale until June 11, so if you want a copy, order now!

In this podcast I talk to Seymour about how we made the book.

This is a self-published limited-edition print run. It’s a gorgeously-printed hardback edition. At over 260 pages, with 970+ beautiful illustrations this is the ultimate coffee table BJJ book, but it doesn’t just look good, it’s designed to teach you the techniques of BJJ.

We’ve got all our favourite BJJ moves from basic movements, standing techniques, sweeps, guard, guard passing, submissions and escapes. There’s also a section on the history of BJJ and lots of advice on training, strategy, concepts and principles of the art.

Shipping shouldn’t be too expensive either. Remember, this is a limited edition run and when they’re gone, they’re gone! Get yours today at Meerkatsu.com

In this podcast I talk to internal martial artist Ethan Murchie about this teacher Vince Black from whom he learned xing yi mixed with elements of Sufism and Shamanism, as well as the North American Tang Shou Tao Association which Vince set up and is still running today.

We also cover the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal medicine (the Huangdi Neijing) which Ethan teaches through his Living Neijing website, the meaning of Chinese terms like qi, peng, lu, ji and an, as well as his tai chi teacher Liang Dehua and the Yang Shouhou lineage of Yang family tai chi.

North American Tang Shou Tao Association https://www.natsta.org/

Living Neijing https://livingneijing.ca/

Liang Dehua https://taijiacademy.online/

Simon Thakur is the founder of Ancestral Movement "An ecological approach to movement and mind-body practice, exploring ancient ancestral patterns of movement and awareness built into our bodies, rediscovering the power, grace and ease of natural movement and our bodies’ innate connection to the rest of the living world.

In this episode we cover many subjects including Yoga, Chinese Martial Arts, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Tai Chi, Shamanism and more!

Simon's website: https://www.ancestralmovement.com/

Simon's new online practice group https://www.ancestralmovement.com/member-site-homepage-1

The Tai Chi Notebook: https://thetaichinotebook.com/

Alan Wycherley runs the YouTube channel 'In Defence of the Traditional Martial Arts' and is a tai chi practitioner who is interested in using the art as a practical self-defence system.

In Defence of the Traditional Martial Arts: https://www.youtube.com/@indefenceofthetraditionalma

Twitter: https://x.com/alwycherley

The Fajin Project: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thefajinproject

Podcast by The Tai Chi Notebook (c) 2025

https://thetaichinotebook.com/

Baguazhang misconceptions with Edward Hines

My guest for episode 35 is Edward Hines, a long time Baguazhang student of Lou Dexiu. Ed started training Bagua in Taiwan way back in 1991, and has continued ever since. He now teaches online at I-bagua.com and has books about Baguazhang you can find on Amazon.

To frame our chat we decided to cast around for the most common misconceptions you hear about Baguazhang, and address each of them, one at a time.

Links:

www.i-bagua.com

thetaichinotebook.com

This episode of The Tai Chi Notebook podcast is slightly different to a regular episode. There isn't a guest, but that doesn't mean I'm alone...

This episode is brought to you using the power of AI. I fed a recent blog post from The Tai Chi Notebook into Google's NotebookLM, an AI that produces a podcast based on your article, just to see what would happen and the result was so good that I decided to put it out as a real episode! See what you think.

Original blog post:

https://thetaichinotebook.com/2024/09/16/how-to-do-takedowns-and-throws-in-tai-chi-xing-yi-baguazhang-or-any-martial-art/