Louis Swaim lives and practices in Oakland, California. He has also translated an earlier taijiquan manual, Yang Chengfu: The Essence and Applications of Taijiquan (North Atlantic Books, 2005). He received his masters degree in Chinese history, Mandarin, and Classical Chinese at U.C. Berkeley, and did additional language study at the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies. He has been a taijiquan practitioner for over thirty years.