Merry Christmas and things to look forward to in the new year :)

Happy holidays! There will be no more classes until Monday 6 January (except for one at Park Royal Spa and you need to be a member of the health club).

Enjoy the season and keep doing tai chi and qigong.

There will be lots of new and exciting things happening in the New Year. We will be starting the 8 step form on Wednesday afternoons at Hurst Dance Studios in Hindley and on Monday evenings we will be starting the Tai Chi Kung Fu Fan form at the Captains Lane Community Centre in Ashton-in-Makerfield.

Although the Monday extra half hour has been free up until now I will be starting to charge £3/session from the new year, making it £9 if you stay for both classes. There is still a 25% discount for paying monthly and it is included in the £30 for all classes in a month offer.

I am still looking into starting a daytime sword class sometime early next year. This will probably be on Mondays after the Guild Hall class in Walkden - I just need to get the paperwork sorted out first.

It is worth booking early for the Deyin Taijiquan Institute Chinese New Year Spring Festival on Saturday 25 January as it is always popular and is free to Deyin members (membership is only £20/year). There are tai chi and qigong workshops throughout the day given by Deyin instructors.

This is followed by an evening of celebration with food, demonstrations, raffle and lion dancing. Then on Sunday there is an opportunity to get a taste of the Mandarin language and calligraphy, with qigong in the afternoon. There is a charge for the evening celebration and Sunday workshops.

If you are interested in health qigong and would like to take it further there are one-day workshops on different forms at the Chinese Culture Centre in Telford on 11/12 January and 8/9 February. These workshops are aimed at instructors and would-be instructors but are open to all serious practitioners.

And if you are interested in the martial applications of tai chi, Angela Howarth will be running a series of weekend morning workshops in Liverpool.

Guild Hall still closed

The Guild Hall is still closed. Rather than pushing our luck with another outdoor class, I am going to cancel Monday's session and we will start again warm and dry on Monday 6 January.

All other classes will go ahead as normal next week.

Still no Guild Hall class

The floor at the Guild Hall is taking longer to dry out than expected, so there will be no class there on Monday :(. Weather permitting, we will go to the park again. We still hope to be there for the last class of the year on 16 December.

Outdoor tai chi

Well done to the dedicated group who braved ice, frost and friendly dogs to do tai chi in Walkden Park today.

Fingers crossed we will be back inside in the warm next week!