THE ancient Chinese martial art of Tai Chi is well known for its health benefits, meditative movements, and focus on balance and wellbeing.

Now with a new Teacher Training Course in Infinite Tai Chi, Chi Kung and Meditation run by The Great Way Tai Chi Academy, practitioners of this transformational art can themselves become teachers, sharing the benefits with others.

Run by Carmel O’Connor and Maria King, the academy will hold its first training weekend at Brú Columbanus in Wilton on January 31st and February 1st of 2026.

Carmel who has a background in education has always advocated wellbeing and began learning Infinite Tai Chi in 2000 from the founder of Infinite Tai chi, and Daoist master, Jason Chan

She then assisted on Jason’s Teacher Training Courses for Infinite Tai chi in Cork, before running her own classes and workshops in locations throughout Ireland.

Living in West Cork since 2016, Carmel currently holds Infinite Tai Chi classes in Clonakilty, Monday mornings in Spillers Lane and in Skibbereen on Monday evenings at the Riverside Studio.

Keen to pass on the benefits of Tai Chi to a wider audience she is now running this Teacher Training Course.

Her teaching academy is known as The Great Way Tai Chi Academy.

It is a three-year course, but she explains that people can take it year by year, and the first year is a Foundation course.

“Our aim is to teach people the great arts of Infinite Tai Chi, Chi Kung and Meditation and to make them accessible to people in todays stressed out world. This training course will assist people to become teachers in their own right or people can take the training simply for their own personal development.

“There is a huge awareness of the benefits of Tai Chi in Ireland and we would like to be at the forefront of training people to teach these arts in their local communities in Cork and beyond for the benefit of all.”

Once trained, Carmel outlines that there is a huge opportunity for anyone who is looking for a new and exciting career where they can really assist others to a better life.

“We have worked with schools, corporate settings, Irish Arthritis Foundation, Brain injury Ireland, Women’s and Men’s sheds, and we do classes with the local ETBs. Many Infinite Tai Chi teachers run their own retreats and workshops in Ireland and beyond as Tai Chi now has world-wide recognition. Tai Chi supports mental and physical health and doctors recognise its benefits and recommend it for several medical conditions like arthritis, low bone density, breast cancer, heart disease, sleep problems etc. This course as Carmel emphasises is also very much a personal development course,

“I’ve found my life has been transformed by doing Infinite Tai Chi, and the Teacher Training Course serves to enhance that. If you have a calmer body and a calmer mind, it benefits everything you do. Tai Chi has an energy of its own and is getting more and more popular.”

Carmel primarily undertook a Teacher Training Course in Infinite Tai Chi to help her in her very stressful job. As Tai Chi enhanced her own wellbeing so much, she now wants to pass on the benefits to others,

“I really want to expand the Infinite Tai Chi teacher community in West Cork, it’s transformed my life and I want other people to experience its benefits.”

Contact Carmel on 087 2373343 or www.carmeloconnor.com [email protected]