Lee-style tai chi

According to practitioners, it was first brought to the West in the 1930s by Chan Kam Lee and was subsequently popularized by Chee Soo who was the President of the International Taoist Society from 1958 until his death in 1994.

His family moved to a fishing village called Weihaiwei on the East coast of China in Shandong Province and settled there and practised a range of Taoist Arts.

The techniques were passed on from one generation to the next and kept within the family until the last in their line, Chan Kam Lee, fled the war torn China of the 1930s and emigrated to London to establish a business in the jewel trade.

Chee Soo: No he was sitting there, just sitting there very quietly, and I went over to retrieve my ball, and I came up to the front of him to apologise, and I saw he was Chinese, and we got talking and he was an importer/exporter, very much alone he had no family, and I was of course actually an orphan and having no family of my own, and the friendship gradually grew and grew, and till eventually in actual fact after many meetings he invited me to his club in Holborn, Red Lion Square, which he had a little club meeting three or four times a week, and from then on I practised under him almost continuously.

Chee Soo wrote several books about the various aspects of the Lee style Taoist Arts published by HarperCollins which became best-sellers and were subsequently licensed by HarperCollins to other major international publishers and translated into various languages including French (distributed in Canada, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Portugal), German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Polish, and Indonesian.

[7] Since his death in August 1994 there are now several schools teaching the Lee-style tai chi based in the British Isles each of which emphasise different aspects of the Lee style Taoist Arts.

[11] Chee Soo's tai chi classes invariably included Qigong or energy cultivation, and Daoyin or breathing exercises.

The Lee style also includes various partner exercises for two or three people, the most important of which is called "sticky hands" (Yīfù shǒu 依附手).

The two arts include techniques to ward off, parry and deflect thrusts which may be made towards your body, and with constant practise you can develop the ability to recognize your partner's intentions before they are carried out.

Greater mental concentration is required to retain complete control of the arms, wrists and hands, while maintaining perfect balance, especially in a few sequences where the body makes a complete whirl to demonstrate the 'order of the universe'....the 'Sword' form, which comprises 216 movements, has no straight lines[23] Tai Chi stick Lee style tai chi stick comprises a form of 270 movements.