In late 2025, an ancient Chinese martial arts technique, Tai Chi, broke out on social media packaged as ‘silent walking’, ‘moving meditation’, and as an alternative to high-intensity workout training. It is a movement that evolved from a niche wellness habit into a mainstream fitness sub genre. The trend did not lose momentum in 2026 as it exploded globally.
On reels and shorts, Tai Chi often appears almost deceptively simple as a series of slow, flowing movements performed with an unusual calmness. But this martial art is a philosophy of movement and, for one city-based practitioner, a way of understanding the body that has shaped nearly four decades of his life.
TV Ranga Rao believes that the slowness of Tai Chi is what allows the body to understand movement better and eventually, move with greater speed and precision.
One of the central principles of his teaching is that the body should not be treated as a collection of separate parts. A movement that appears to originate in the hand, for instance, may actually begin from the hip and involve a chain of muscles working together. Tai Chi, he explains, is built around eight hand and five foot movements, with coordinated body weight and movement playing an important role. “When you know how to move and how to use your body weight properly, the movement works through the muscles and makes them stronger,” he says.
He began his journey in this practice after he came to Chennai from Chhattisgarh in 1984 to pursue engineering. At the time, he was already learning martial arts. He also suffered from eosinophilia, with dangerously low levels of cells. His teacher’s teacher, Veeran Vaughan, who had come from Malaysia, noticed him taking medication and advised him to explore exercise instead. That pushed him towards Tai Chi and its therapeutic applications.
Consequently, Ranga trained in several forms of Tai Chi and came to be known as Sifu Ranga Rao in martial arts circles. In 1985, he learnt Chen-style Tai Chi, widely regarded as one of the oldest and more martial forms of the practice. In 1989 came the 24-form Yang style and 35-form Wu style. He later acquired knowledge and practised the 42-form competition style in 2002 and film-style Tai Chi in 2003.
Since 1999, he has worked with the corporate sector, introducing Tai Chi into workplaces in India. He takes the practice into their office where short sessions involving breathing, posture, weight transfer, and coordinated movements can be performed. Recently, he has been training 38 Deputy Superintendents of Police (DSP) in Tamil Nadu, who are undergoing training at the police academy. His sessions combine elements of Tai Chi with health, fitness, and self-defence.
Ranga draws connections between Tai Chi’s principles of flow and balance and traditional Indian practices, including the Ananda Thandavam associated with the Nataraja tradition at Chidambaram. He believes that historical and philosophical traditions rooted in India travelled to China, where they were adopted and evolved into practices of movement, meditation, and martial arts. He says, “Tai Chi has to be understood as a philosophy as much as a physical practice. That is why it is widely practised in China and not as much in the country where it originated.”
Beyond where and how the practice originated or its evolution, the core principle remains the same — the human body needs to move.