I taught Tai Chi for five or six years. A year and a half ago I quit because people wanted to turn it into a religion. Most of my students were ex-Catholics who said Tai Chi was their spritual practice and seemed to think they were complementing me.

I had one student ask what I was doing for Christmas once thinking I was a buddhist or something. He and several others who were listening were very, very disappointed to hear I was a devout Catholic.

Tai Chi has Taoist undercurrents that can be spiritual, but I taught for a hospital and mostly for health.

Is there a way to quietly spread undercurrents of the Faith? I was doing things like emptying my pockets of keys, wallet and rosary before practice on one the tables . A silent witness among the mundane.

It seems that if you're teaching Tai Chi, it would be appropriate at some point to say where this type of discipline came from, and what its role was in that religious or spiritual system. At that point, you could also let it be known that that's not your own spirituality, but as a Catholic, you find benefit in using it for reasons a, b, c . . . That's pretty straightforward, and might even help to reassure some that you're not trying to maneuver them into some kind of Eastern system.