| Recent History
Bruce Frantzis, the teacher of our Moving Tiger teachers, learned the Moving Tiger Method exercises in Beijing, China from 1985 to 1987. There the exercises were known as Dragon and Tiger chi gung. His teacher was Zhang Jai Hua, a doctor of Chinese medicine. Frantzis studied privately with Zhang for two years. She deemed him fully qualified to teach the entire system as she had learned it from her uncle. Her uncle learned it at the Shaolin Temple in China's Henan Province (see Origins). Frantzis also worked in Zhang's Beijing clinic as a doctor of Chinese medicine. Patients there practiced the exercises to strengthen and balance their energy to support their healing. In 1990 Frantzis began to teach the exercises in the United States and Europe. Bill Ryan, Frantzis' long-time student and an MIT-trained systems engineer, was one of the first to learn. In 1992 Ryan founded Brookline Tai Chi near Boston. During 13 years as the school's director he and his teachers taught hundreds of students the exercises. He also continued to learn more refined aspects of Dragon and Tiger from Frantzis, and they discussed extensively ideas for explaining and teaching the exercises to Westerners. In 2006 Ryan, with the permission of Frantzis, founded the Moving Tiger Method. Moving Tiger seeks to teach Westerners the Dragon and Tiger system in the most authentic and simplest manner achievable, through a combination of contemporary Western and ancient Chinese teaching methods. |
