Fair Trade Tai Chi. Inc. is a Washington D.C. based non-profit dedicated to preserving Tai Chi as a soft Martial Art. We provide weekly Tai Chi classes for all level players, seminars and workshops at various Tai Chi schools around the country.

Our Mission

To preserve and propagate Tai Chi as a soft Martial Art and moving meditation following the methods laid out in the Taijiquan Classics and outlined by the teaching of Professor Cheng Man-Ching and Mr. Robert W. Smith.

OUR VISION

Our 'new' approach to this ancient art brings us back to its origins. The initial insight of T'ai Chi Ch'uan, that the soft can overcome the hard was not a philosophical concept, rather it was a demonstrable technique in which an opponent's speed and strength are overcome with a soft technique. Our own speed and strength are not a concern in self-defense; and in fact they are a hinderance. Knowing this counterintuitive fact, and the soft technique, opens the T'ai Chi Ch'uan Classics up for a different interpretation than the modern perspective. Currently the Classics are mostly considered a valuable tool in one's T'ai Chi Ch'uan studies, yet they are more inspirational and metaphorical than literal in nature. Contrarily, we feel that these Classics have captured the original oral tradition that was striving to preserve a practical, albeit counterintuitive, technique of the soft overcoming the hard. We further believe that Professor Cheng Man Ching revealed this codified system in his Cheng Tzu's Thirteen Treatises on T'ai Chi Ch'uan that teaches the technique and the tradition in which stillness and softness can truly overcome the fast and strong. We wish to share this with all our T'ai Chi friends.

VISIONARIES

Stephen J. Goodson

Stephen has studied T'ai Chi, PaKua, and HsingI with Mr. Robert W. Smith (martial arts author & student of Cheng Man-ch'ing) starting in 1981 and has permission to teach all three arts. In his pursuit to understand something about how the body works Stephen has been certified as an EMT and studied Chinese medicine at the Maryland School of Acupuncture. In his pursuit to understand something about how the mind works Stephen earned a certificate in hypnosis, is a hobbyist magician and is a former board member of the National Capital Area Skeptics. He also holds an Associates Degree in Chinese Language. He is a software developer by trade.

Billy Fox

Billy has trained Taiji for three decades, including nearly a decade with Robert W. Smith. A writer and musician by trade, he is perhaps the only non-Japanese member of a professional kagura group, and performs with Tanijugo Kagura Shachu during Shinto festivals in rural Shimane, Japan.

Robyn Wyrick

Robyn is a Tai Chi fan and researcher. His work on the “Ti Fang Proofs” (a series of obvious demos that show the magic of Ti Fang is simple mechanical terms) is simply brilliant. By day he is a software developer and creative.