Qigong is a traditional Chinese exercise practised by ordinary Chinese and dating back thousands of years. The Western medical view is that it is a form of circulation exercise.
Tai chi originated from the Chinese martial art taijiquan being without the martial elements and is distinctly different in both origin and application to qigong.
Both originate in China and provide health benefits, but any similarity ends there. Immediately obvious is that traditional qigong exercises are performed in a static pose while tai chi forms involve stepping movements where there is a focus on the weight transfer. In addition, tai chi does not incorporate the full extension stretches performed in qigong exercises which are effectively dynamic stretching.
Explanations to link the two, including labelling tai chi as “moving qigong”, are modern day constructions which cannot be found in the tai chi literature and serve little purpose other than to confuse.
Qigong exercises have been done throughout China by the ordinary Chinese for thousands of years, well before Chinese martial arts evolved into distinct styles. As can be seen in the Daoyin Tu “chart for leading and guiding people in exercise for improving health and treatment of pain” which contains animal postures such as the bear walk.
This is a reconstruction of a ‘Guiding and Pulling Chart’ excavated from the Mawangdui Tomb 3 sealed in 168BC in the former kingdom of Changsha. The original is in the Hunan Provincial Museum, Changsha, China.
Misunderstanding can also arise from mispronunciation. The “chi” in tai chi is not the “qi” in qigong. You will also see tai chi written as taiji, which is the more modern Pinyin spelling which provides for correct pronunciation of the “chi” in tai chi as “g”. The “qi” in qigong is pronounced “chi”!
While qigong has remained largely unchanged, the tai chi we know today has evolved without the martial elements from the two earliest taijiquan styles, Chen and Yang, to include Wu, Hao and Sun styles into the 5 recognised orthodox styles today along with a number of more recent styles. The martial art, taijiquan, continues most noticeably in the Chen style.