The Story
A practice carried home
from the place it was born.
Yaakov Schy is a Chen-style Tai Chi teacher based in Chicago. He spent five and a half years in rural China studying agriculture, medicine, and the form — and has spent the last decade teaching it the way it was given to him.
The Journey
From a research lab in China
to a quiet studio at home.
Yaakov didn't go to China to study Tai Chi. He went to study agriculture and medicine. The form found him almost by accident, the way a long practice usually finds anyone — through proximity, repetition, and the slow recognition that something quiet has been changing in your body.
What was meant to be a year-long internship became five and a half. The work was real — rural agricultural research, traditional Chinese medicine, language immersion — but the mornings belonged to the form. He learned the way his teachers had been taught: in silence, by demonstration, corrected with a touch on the elbow when something was off. There were no diplomas. There were just the years.
"The form is patient. It will wait as long as you need it to. The only thing it asks is that you keep showing up."
— A teacher in Yunnan, 2019
When Yaakov came home to the States, he carried three things with him: fluent Mandarin, a deeper practice than he had expected, and a quiet commitment to teach what he had been given. He started with a handful of students in a borrowed studio space. The first cohort was six people. Most of them are still practicing.
That practice has now become a school — small by choice, slow by design, and grounded in the same approach his teachers used. Yaakov teaches the Chen style: the oldest of the Tai Chi lineages, born in Chen Village in the seventeenth century and the root from which every other style — Yang, Wu, and the rest — later grew. It joins slow, meditative movement to sudden releases of power and the deep spiraling force the Chen family calls silk-reeling. He teaches it the way it was taught to him. Patiently. In detail. Without rushing anyone toward anywhere.
On Tai Chi Stepping
In Chen-style Tai Chi, stepping is a discipline of its own. Before the hands do anything, the feet learn to carry the body's weight slowly and completely from one leg to the other — rooted, unhurried, always in balance. Good stepping is what turns the form into walking meditation: quiet, continuous, and grounded in the floor beneath you.
The Years
A Practice Over Time
First introduction
Yaakov has studied movement and martial arts since age four. He earned a black belt in karate, placed fourth in the state wrestling championships. Holds a black belt in Uechi Ryu Karate.
Arrival in China
Moved to rural Yunnan province for an agricultural research internship. Began studying Mandarin intensively. Discovered the local Tai Chi community within weeks.
Formal study begins
Accepted as a long-term student by a Chen-style lineage holder. Daily morning practice, six days a week, alongside continued study of traditional Chinese medicine.
Return to America
Came home with the form intact, fluent Mandarin, and a commitment to teach. Started with a handful of students in a borrowed studio — the first cohort was six people.
Move to Chicago
Relocated to Chicago and began building a practice in a new city — the place that is now home.
Local classes established
Established ongoing local classes in Chicago — group sessions and private students, with rolling enrollment throughout the year.
The work continues
Teaching weekly group classes, private students, and the ongoing community of practitioners. The form goes on. So does the student in him.
Teaching Approach
How Yaakov Teaches
Three principles that shape every class, every private session, every correction given on the studio floor.
Slowly, in Detail
The form was developed slowly. It is taught slowly. New students learn one movement at a time, with corrections given as needed and not before. There is no curriculum to "get through." There is only the form, and the time it takes.
By Demonstration
Tai Chi is learned through the body, not through words. Yaakov teaches the way his teachers in China taught — by showing, by repeating, by adjusting a posture with a hand on the shoulder. Words come second, and only when they're needed.
Built to Last
The goal is not a credential or a sequence memorized. The goal is a practice that becomes part of your life — that survives travel, illness, busy seasons, and the years. Everything in class is designed with this longer arc in mind.
The Lineage
A Direct Line to the Source
Chen-Style Tai Chi is the oldest of the Tai Chi lineages — passed teacher to student, largely within a single family, for close to four centuries. Yaakov's teachers, and their teachers before them, carry a form that traces directly back to Chen Village.
Chen Wangting (c. 1600 – 1680)
Creator of Chen-style Tai Chi and the source of the whole art. A ninth-generation resident of Chen Village (Chenjiagou) in Henan, this retired wove martial technique, breath, and classical theory into the first Tai Chi form.
Chen Changxing (1771 – 1853)
Distilled the family art into the Old Frame (Laojia) routines still taught today — and became the first master to teach an outsider, Yang Luchan, from whom Yang style and every later lineage would grow.
Chen Fake (1887 – 1957)
Great-grandson of Chen Changxing. In 1928 he carried Chen style out of the village to Beijing, teaching openly for the first time and shaping how the form is practiced around the world today.
Chen Xiaowang · Chen Zhenglei
Among the nineteenth-generation masters known as the "Four Buddha's Warriors" of Chenjiagou, who carried Chen style from the village to the wider world from the 1980s onward.
Yaakov's Teachers
The teachers who trained Yaakov during his years in China, within the living Chen lineage that traces — unbroken — back to Chen Village.
Beyond the Studio
Writing, Talks & Media
Yaakov's years in China — and the journey home — have led to published essays, podcast interviews, and national speaking engagements on Chinese culture, personal transformation, and Jewish life, alongside his forthcoming memoir, Made in China. His writing, talks, and media appearances are collected in one place on his personal site.
Practice With Yaakov
The story is interesting.
The practice is the point.
If anything here resonated, the next step is a conversation. No pressure, no commitment — just a chance to ask whatever you want to ask.