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Silently, the group bows to the spirit of compassion. In perfect synchrony, the group begins to move — slowly, gently, gracefully; they remain silent, but for the occasional call of "single whip" or "two more, please." They could be dancers, if only there were music; they could be fighting, if the enemy were invisible and attacking in slow motion. They are practicing tai chi.

The Mandarin phrase "t'ai chi ch'uan" translates into English as something like, "unbounded fist," "supreme ultimate fist," or "no higher form of boxing." In both Taoism and Confucianism, the "supreme ultimate" represents the fusion of yin and yang, so familiar to us in the taijitu (yin-yang) symbol.

In the sixth century of the common era, an Indian or Persian monk known to history as Bodhidharma went to the Shao-Lin Monastery in China, where he was known as Ta Mo. ("Dharma" is "the virtuous path." The Buddha, or Enlightened One, is said to have taught his disciples the dharma while sitting under a tree at Bodh Gaya, a small town in northern India.)

Seeing that his fellow monks were in poor physical condition from spending too much time sitting still to meditate, Bodhidharma invented a form of "meditation in motion" called the "18-Form Exercise." The "18-Form Exercise" later gave rise to all the eastern martial arts we know today, both the Wei Chia ("external" arts such as kung fu and karate) and the Nei Chia ("internal" arts such as tai chi and lok hup ba fa).

Many historians believe that tai chi chuan itself originated with the ninth-century Taoist philosopher Li Daotzu (or Li Tao-Tzu), who defined the first 37 moves in a book called "The Earlier Heaven Movements." Today's students of tai chi will still recognize many of Li's moves, including "single whip," "strum the pei-pa," "high pat on horse," "step up to seven stars," "jade lady works the shuttles," and "phoenix spreads wings."

Two centuries later, according to legend, Zhang San Feng (or Cheung San-feng), another Shao-Lin priest, morphed the earlier system of movements into a system of 13 postures, corresponding to the eight trigrams of the I Ching and the five elements of Taoism (water, fire, earth, wood, and metal). Historians believe Zhang lived somewhere around 1391 to 1459. His exercises stressed suppleness and elasticity, as opposed to rigidity and force, and incorporated Taoist and Confucian philosophy, physiology, the laws of dynamics, and even psychology.

Zhang's disciples Wang Chung-Yueh and Chiang Fa developed Zhang's

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