Lydia Tillianaki

Lydia Tillianaki was born in Athens and has started her training in Yang style tai chi chuan in 1984 in Belgium where she originally went for music studies. After two years she moved to London to continue teach with her formal tai chi teacher, San Gee Tam. She studied with him for about 10 years. In those years she taught classes as an assistant also her own in various locations in London and countryside.

She moved back to Greece around 1993 and started teaching a few classes in Athens . Tai Chi was not well known at that time in Greece. Athens had only very few teachers and other cities in Greece had almost none.

Being interested in continuing her studies in tai chi chuan from an original source, she invited Master Alex Dong in 1998 to Athens for workshops. She knew about Dong family from her first tai chi teacher who was studying with Grand Master Dong Zhen Chen (Master Alex's father).

Since then she changed her way of practicing the long form to Master Alex Dong's way and has been inviting Alex every year to Greece for workshops. She also travels to see Alex for more tuition. She created the Nea Smyrni Tai Chi Chuan Association in 1998. The school grew through the years with more students, and a lot of successful workshops international and local have been organised at least once a year.

She is dedicated to continue deepening her knowledge in tai chi chuan and having more and more people know about this art and benefiting from it. She also studies Chi gong as complementary to tai chi.