Two teachers. One alliance. A living link to China.
The International Tai Chi Alliance is the teaching home of Master Instructors Ron Pfeiffer (Wisconsin, U.S.) and Linda Arksey (United Kingdom). Together they teach students online, train new instructors, and return each year to study Chen-style Tai Chi under Master Zhu Lifei at the Hanfei International Tai Chi Center in Ningbo.
Ron Pfeiffer
Wisconsin · Zoom lessons · Burlington Senior Center
Ron has taught martial arts and Tai Chi since the late 1970s. He rebuilt the martial arts program at the Lake Geneva YMCA, opened his own school, and later focused his teaching on Tai Chi and Qigong for health, balance, and depth of practice.
He is a registered Tai Chi Master Instructor with the American Tai Chi and Qigong Association (2017) and holds recognition with the Chinese World Wushu Development Center as a referee and advanced instructor. After a karate injury damaged his knee, he turned more fully to Tai Chi. What began as rehabilitation became a second life’s work.
Since 2016–2017 he has trained in Ningbo almost every year. He has been recognized as a 13th-generation inheritor of Chen-style Tai Chi Chuan. He now teaches primarily live on Zoom, and he leads the community classes at the Burlington Senior Center.
Linda Arksey
United Kingdom · Alliance co-founder · Instructor training
Linda is co-founder of the International Tai Chi Alliance. A former competitive skater, she brings expert body awareness and a teacher’s eye for alignment. She is a qualified Anatomy and Physiology instructor through iTEC, which shapes how she explains movement to both beginners and teacher-candidates.
Linda trains alongside Ron in Ningbo each year and co-leads instructor workshops, including the Introduction to Tai Chi / Yang 8 pathway that several students have used to begin teaching in their own communities.
She teaches her own lessons in the United Kingdom. U.K. students who want to work with Linda should email the Alliance.
Lineage, in plain language
Chen-style Tai Chi was created in Chen Village (Chenjiagou), Henan. Ron and Linda’s current teacher, Master Zhu Lifei, is a 12th-generation Chen practitioner. Their yearly month in Ningbo is not tourism. It is how they keep the forms they teach connected to a living Chinese lineage, then carry that standard back to Zoom students and Alliance instructors.
They also teach accessible Yang-style sets (including Yang 8 and Yang 24), Qigong, 13 Essential Forms, and weapon work for students who are ready.
What students notice
Lessons are patient, step-by-step, and adapted to the person on the screen or on the floor. Reviewers return to the same words: clear, kind, thorough, and able to make a difficult art understandable.