Why I Created VirtualTaiChi
For generations, learning Tai Chi meant finding a qualified teacher nearby and arranging your life around a class schedule.
There is something wonderful about learning directly from a teacher and practicing together with other students. There always will be.

But the digital world has given us another way to learn.

Today, millions of people successfully use online instruction for resistance training, yoga, mobility work, meditation, martial arts, and countless other physical skills. They can study with teachers they might never have been able to reach because of geography, schedules, or distance.

More importantly, they can learn at their own pace. That matters tremendously in Tai Chi. In a traditional class, I may demonstrate a movement several times, but eventually the class has to move forward. Online, the lesson waits for you. Pause it. Rewind it. Watch my feet. Watch my hands. Listen to the explanation again. Then get up and try it. Tomorrow, come back and do it again.

That's not a limitation of online learning. That's one of its greatest strengths. VirtualTaiChi was created to take advantage of that strength.



Where Medicine and Movement Meet
My medical background has had a tremendous influence on the way I teach Tai Chi.
I am a practitioner of Chinese medicine and acupuncture, a Certified Myofascial Trigger Point Therapist, and the creator of the SpiralFlow Method of Joint Mobility™.
My postgraduate studies have included acupuncture in the treatment of substance abuse at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx, New York, as well as Acupuncture and Functional Neurology — the integration of Chinese medicine and clinical neuroscience — at the Carrick Institute in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Over the years, I became increasingly fascinated by a simple question:
What happens to the human body and brain when we move well — and what happens when we stop?
That question eventually contributed to the development of NeuroTaiChi™.
NeuroTaiChi explores Tai Chi not simply as an ancient martial art, but as a sophisticated form of movement training that challenges balance, coordination, posture, sensory awareness, motor control, and the relationship between the brain and the body.
In other words, I want my students to understand not only how to move, but why we move the way we do.

The Connection Between Movement and Health
My clinical interests eventually took me into another fascinating area of medicine: the human microbiome.
For more than 15 years, I have studied digestive health with particular emphasis on the relationship between the intestinal microbiome, the nervous system, stress, and overall health.
That work eventually led me to write and publish In the Belly of Darkness: A Journey Through the Gut's Microbiome and Its Secrets.
So what does the gut microbiome have to do with Tai Chi?
More than you might think.
The body does not operate as a collection of separate parts. Movement, breathing, stress, sleep, digestion, the nervous system, muscles, balance, and brain function are constantly interacting with one another.
That understanding has changed the way I practice medicine, and it has also changed the way I teach Tai Chi.
I don't see Tai Chi simply as a sequence of beautiful movements.
I see it as a way of training the human organism.

This Is Not "One Size Fits All" Tai Chi
People come to Tai Chi with very different bodies and very different backgrounds.
Some are athletic, while others have never exercised consistently. Some are flexible; some are stiff. Some have excellent balance, while others haven't challenged their balance in years.
Some students may simply be starting later in life and wondering whether Tai Chi is still something they can learn.
It is.
My job is not to force every student into exactly the same physical expression of a posture. My job is to help you understand the principles behind the movement and then help you apply those principles within your present abilities.
As your strength, mobility, coordination, balance, and understanding improve, your Tai Chi can evolve with you.
This makes the training accessible to beginners while still providing layers of refinement for experienced practitioners.
We begin where you are, not where you think you should be.

A Different Way to Learn Tai Chi Online
VirtualTaiChi is not intended to be a library of videos that you watch once and forget.
It is a training system.
We build from principles. We develop structure before adding complexity. We learn movements in manageable pieces and then gradually connect those pieces together.
Online learning also allows us to separate learning from performing.
You don't have to struggle to remember everything while trying to keep up with the person standing in front of you. You can study a principle first, explore the movement slowly, and return to it as many times as necessary.
The ability to revisit lessons is one of the great strengths of online training.
Something that doesn't make sense today may suddenly become clear after several weeks of practice. You can return to that lesson and see it with different eyes.
That's learning.
And because every student progresses differently, the goal is not to keep up with someone else.
The goal is to continue moving forward from wherever you started.

You Don't Have to Be Perfect to Practice
One of the most common things I hear from students is, "I didn't practice because I was afraid I would do it wrong."
That is a mistake.
Of course you are going to make mistakes. So did I, and so does every person who has ever learned anything worthwhile.
Nobody begins by performing Tai Chi with perfect alignment, perfect coordination, and perfect understanding.
You learn, you practice, you make corrections, and then you practice again.
That is the path.
Think about a child learning to walk. They don't wait until they understand biomechanics before taking their first step.
They take the step. They wobble, they fall, they get back up — and eventually, something extraordinary becomes ordinary.
Tai Chi is no different.
Proper performance of the postures takes time. We are all in the process of refining our expression of the art.
The goal is not perfection.
The goal is improvement through consistent, thoughtful practice.

My Role as Your Teacher
I want you to enjoy your training, but my purpose is not simply to lead you through movements.
My job is to teach you the principles behind those movements.
I want you to understand structure, balance, relaxation without collapse, and how force travels through the body. I want you to begin recognizing what your body is doing instead of simply copying what mine is doing.
Most importantly, I want to give you the tools to continue learning long after the lesson ends.
This is where my background as both a clinician and a teacher becomes especially important.
I look at movement through several lenses: traditional Chinese internal arts, biomechanics, anatomy, neurology, balance, coordination, and decades of experience working with the human body.
You don't need to understand all of those subjects.
That's my job.
My job is to take what can be complicated and make it understandable, practical, and useful to you.

Still a Student
Tai Chi takes time. It takes patience, curiosity, introspection, and practice.
But you don't have to rush, you don't have to compete with anyone, and you certainly don't have to be perfect.
You simply have to begin.
After more than four decades of studying martial arts, I still consider myself a student.
I am still learning, still refining, and still discovering things hidden inside movements I have performed thousands of times.
That is one of the great gifts of Tai Chi:
There is always another layer.
It is my intention to pass along the information that has been generously given to me by my teachers, along with the discoveries I have made during my own journey.
So I invite you to join me on the path.
The main difference between us is simply this:
I've been walking it a little longer.
Fernando Bernall, DOM