James Arax

Painting × Tai Chi Chuan — 20 years of practice. One rule: gesture + intention.

This page shares the background behind TaichiFlow—my work across architecture, tech entrepreneurship, and practice. For corporate inquiries, use the TaichiFlow Corporate page; for art, see the links below.

Flow
Who I am: flow as the art of time
My name is James Arax. I am the creator of TaichiFlow. For over twenty years, I have practiced both painting and Tai Chi Chuan. Over time, I came to see that these two disciplines share a common ground: they both teach an art of time. In both, gesture does not begin with force or control. It emerges from within, until intention, breath, attention, and movement align.
This is what I call flow: a simple continuity of action, where the body knows, the gesture becomes more precise, and the mind clears.

Contrast
Two worlds, one practice: Paris & the forest
For years, I lived between sharply contrasting worlds. On one side were demanding professional environments in Paris — architecture, real estate, and tech entrepreneurship — shaped by deadlines, mental load, rapid decisions, and constant acceleration. On the other side was my studio in Dordogne, in the heart of a forest, where time moved differently: slower cycles, solitude, materials, weather, and a direct relationship with the real. I also spent time in highly physical conditions — forest work, cutting, carrying, handling.
This contrast shaped my understanding of flow. It had to be simple, efficient, embodied, and portable: something real enough to hold under pressure, but subtle enough to restore continuity.

Painting
Large-format work: presence, gesture, regulation
n that setting, I developed a practice of large-format painting: a work of presence, gesture, and regulation. In painting, balance is not something abstract to think about; it is something the body feels, places, adjusts, and sustains in real time. This experience deeply influenced the way I later practiced and taught movement: less theory, more precision; less effort, more alignment; less control, more continuity.
Painting taught me that clarity often comes not from adding more, but from removing unnecessary tension until the gesture becomes evident.

Training
Yang lineage, Tung school, martial understanding
My Tai Chi Chuan practice is rooted in a clear lineage. I trained in Paris with high-level teachers, notably Anya Méot, a major European reference in the discipline, 9th Duan, who transmitted the Yang style through the Tung lineage.
This training was important not only because of the form itself, but because of the way movement was taught. In this lineage, movement was not reduced to outer shape alone. Each gesture of the form was linked to an application, to direction, to intention, to a dynamic of relation and transformation. This martial dimension is not the public face of TaichiFlow, but it profoundly shaped the way I understand practice.
A gesture was never isolated. It belonged to a process: entry, transformation, exit, redirection, continuity. That way of learning developed contextual memory, clearer visualization, sharper attention, a wider perceptual field, and a more precise sense of movement as passage rather than position.
Early on, Anya planted a simple idea: teach it. I kept that quietly in the background for many years, allowing the practice to become solid, daily, and almost silent.

Lineage of practice: I trained in the Yang tradition through the Tung school, with Anya Méot. This lineage gave me not only a form to practice, but a way of understanding movement itself: as continuity, transformation, intention, and relation.

Chen Changxing
→ Yang Luchan (1799–1872)
→ Yang Jianhou (c.1842–1917)
→ Yang Chengfu (1883–1936)
→ Tung Yingjie / Dong Yingjie (1888–1961)
→ Tung Hu-Ling / Dong Huling (1917–1992)
→ Tung Kai-Ying / Dong Kaiying
→ Anya Méot (1941–2022)
École Tung dès 1975 · enseignement 1979–2022
Fondatrice de TOUM · Phénix FFAEMC 2016 · 9e duan neijia FFAEMC 2022
→ James Arax
→ TaichiFlow

Backbone
The Yang long form (108)
My technical foundation is the traditional Yang long form: a codified sequence of 108 movements. Through regular practice, it develops a precise understanding of flow through posture, release, breath, direction, coordination, and stability. Over time, I began not only to teach, but also to structure a contemporary progression that could remain faithful to this depth while becoming usable in real life.
The long form remains the backbone. It is where continuity is trained at length, where structure and release learn to coexist, and where movement becomes a field of attention rather than a collection of isolated techniques.

Transitions
The core of TaichiFlow: the quality of transitions
One insight gradually became central to me: what matters is not only the time spent practicing, but the quality of transitions.
Our days are made of micro-breaks and micro-shifts: screen to screen, meeting to street, message to decision, tension to action, effort to recovery. The body never stops receiving these changes of rhythm. It absorbs them, often invisibly. When transitions are not digested, stress accumulates. Attention narrows. Breathing rises. Inner agitation grows. The nervous system tires.
TaichiFlow was born from that observation, but also from the way I had learned to understand movement. In the martial depth of the practice I received, movement was never static. It was always relational, directional, transitional. This became a key foundation of TaichiFlow.
Flow is therefore not approached as an abstract state. It becomes a practical tool to regulate transitions through concrete adjustments: posture, support, release, breath, gaze, orientation, intention. Sometimes a few slow gestures are enough to restore continuity. And when continuity returns, clarity, calm, and the ability to act often return with it.

Reset
Reactivating flow: a reliable daily tool
Reactivating flow has been a reliable companion in my own life. It helped me through periods of overload, convalescence, insomnia, and important decisions where steadiness mattered. Repeated over time, this practice turns urgency into a clearer inner space. It gives both body and mind back their capacity for action.
This is one of the reasons TaichiFlow is built around short, reactivatable formats. The aim is not only to practice in ideal conditions, but to recover continuity inside real life.

Barcelona
Coaching, cycles, corporate formats
Now based in Barcelona, I am launching TaichiFlow through private coaching (1:1 and Duo), progressive cycles, and corporate formats. Many sessions take place outdoors — in parks and by the seaside — where the setting naturally supports breathing, grounding, and a clean, stable energy.
The method is contemporary in its formats, but rooted in a transmitted practice. From private coaching to cycles, from corporate sessions to coworking and club practice, the same underlying principles remain: continuity, clarity, embodied attention, and the intelligence of transitions.

Deeper roots
A subtle background: transitions, openings, internal shifts
Within the Yang-Tung lineage, I also became sensitive to a more subtle layer of practice: attention to openings and closings, full and empty, internal shifts, and the quality of transformation from one state to another. This background resonates strongly with the way I developed TaichiFlow.
I do not present TaichiFlow as a traditional school or as a martial system. But it inherits from this depth a particular way of understanding movement: not as a fixed form to reproduce, but as a living continuum to refine. This is what gives such importance to transitions throughout the method — in private coaching, progressive cycles, corporate formats, coworking sessions, and club practice.

Links
Art, practice & corporate
Art & practice: Instagram (James Arax) · Art website (Presence Painting)

Site : jamesarax.art
Instagram : @james_arax
LinkedIn : @James Arax (≈7100 followers)
Corporate: For corporate requests, see the TaichiFlow Corporate page and my LinkedIn profile (architecture/tech).