Our Lineage
Tai Chi is passed from teacher to student. Books and videos can show movements. A teacher passes on the details: the angle of a hand, the direction of a force, where the weight settles, when to soften, when to maintain structure and why a movement exists. These details are part of why lineage remains meaningful in traditional Tai Chi.
Sifu George Thomas
The teacher behind our teaching
Sifu George Thomas has spent decades studying and teaching martial arts and Tai Chi. Shiv Shankar began his Tai Chi training under Sifu George Thomas in 2006.
The forms, principles and understanding taught at The Taichi Academy are rooted in the teaching Shiv has received from his Sifu. This relationship is central to the Academy.
Before we teach, we remain students.
Yang Family Tai Chi
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Grandmaster Fu Sheng Yuan
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Sifu George Thomas
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Shiv Shankar
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The Taichi Academy · Canada
Sifu George Thomas’s teaching follows the Yang Family Tai Chi lineage through Grandmaster Fu Sheng Yuan. We acknowledge and respect that lineage while being clear about our own relationship to it: Shiv’s teacher is Sifu George Thomas.
Honouring the teaching
Tradition survives when it is practised. Our responsibility is not simply to preserve a sequence of movements. It is to preserve the principles within them and pass those principles carefully to the next student.
Rooted in lineage. Continued through practice.