Ken Gullette's Internal Fighting Arts Blog

Interactive Video - You Choose the Tai Chi Fighting Application

chen tai chi chen taiji Nov 17, 2021

I am experimenting with interactive videos. Here is my first one. Please watch it and let me know what you think. It allows you to choose which application you will see for the opening movement in a Taiji form.

Connecting is a Skill and Philosophy from Martial Arts You Can Use in Daily Life

awareness philosophy Sep 08, 2021

When you actively put philosophy to work in your martial arts, I believe they improve. The concept of "connecting" with your partner or opponent is one of the most important. You should see no difference between yourself and your opponent. When he moves, you should already be moving and melding with his center. There is no anger, no competition, just connection.

In my daily life, I try to put this connection concept into practice with every person I meet. I'm not better, I'm not really different, and when I connect, I can truly treat complete strangers the way I want to be treated. I watch out for them. I am there to help.

A few years ago, I ran across the "Do Good. Be Kind." people. They spread that mantra, and it resonated with me because of the philosophy I have tried to infuse into my martial arts. It requires empathy and connection to be kind to people. I often wake up in the morning thinking of keeping my eyes open throughout the day for opportunities to help me

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Silk-Reeling Exercises Can Help You Develop Internal Body Mechanics

silk-reeling tai chi silk-reeling taiji silk-reeling Aug 02, 2021

Silk-Reeling exercises are forgotten by some Chen style Taiji students after they practice forms, but I believe these exercises should be included in everyone's training routine.

I first learned Silk-Reeling exercises from Chen Xiaowang and my first Chen Taiji teachers, Jim and Angie Criscimagna. Silk-reeling is known in China as chan ssu chin. As I understand it, the exercises were created in recent decades. They are not part of the traditional training in the Chen Village. I went through a silk-reeling workshop with Chen Xiaowang back in 2000 but was already working on them at that time.

When I began teaching, I tried to organize material in easy-to-understand pieces for my students (and for me). For the past 23 years, I have taught six key principles of body mechanics to beginning students:

1. The ground path

2. Establishing and maintaining peng jin

3. Opening and closing the kua

4. Dan T'ien rotation

5. Whole-body connected movement

6. Silk-Reeling energy

New student...

How Often Do You Meditate?

chi kung meditation qigong Jul 07, 2021

I was in a class yesterday when another student asked the teacher a question about how often you should meditate.

It was an interesting question but my answer might be different than some.

One of the martial arts books that I bought back in the 1970s was "Man of Contrasts," by Hee Il Cho. It was a book about Taekwondo, but at the beginning of the book was a remarkable poem that has stayed with me ever since. Here is the poem:

I can find peace

amidst the cities roar

before the dry, frayed face of confusion,

the exhausted hour.

My peace is cradled within.

This poem came back to me around 1999 when I found myself walking through the crowded sidewalks of Times Square in New York City. People were almost shoulder-to-shoulder, walking in all directions, and instead of being stressed, I found that I was calm, centered, with a feeling of being connected to each person who rushed by -- peace amidst the city's roar.

I began doing qigong in 1987. My goal was to recreate the feeling of in...

Firing Up the Inner Gyroscope Once Again - Finding My Center in the Hospital

health and recovery remain centered Jun 16, 2021

I am writing a book on how the philosophies that I learned during the time I have studied martial arts have guided me through some of the storms of life.

Last week, I found that I was living a new chapter.

After a break of a few years, I suddenly began coughing up blood on Friday, June 4. We're not talking about the type of coughing up blood that you see in the movies -- a fleck or two in a handkerchief.

When I cough up blood, it looks like someone was shotgunned in my sink. I put a picture up on a blog post around 2015. It was gross.

This began in 2009, after three laser ablation procedures on my heart, attempting to stop atrial fibrillation. Instead, the final procedure shut down my left pulmonary veins, so no oxygenated blood goes from my left lung to the heart.

How my body has survived the past 12 years, I have no idea, but it hasn't been easy, and it has made martial arts quite a challenge -- only one lung, coughing up blood occasionally, and, to add insult to injury, I d...

Form is Emptiness - Easy to Ridicule if You Don't Understand

chen tai chi chen taiji tai chi principles May 18, 2021

My daughter, Harmony had a yin/yang sticker on her notebook in 7th grade. She loved it. From the day she was brought home from the hospital and put into a crib in August, 1977, Bruce Lee posters had been on her bedroom wall and she was very familiar with martial arts.

But some of the girls in her 7th grade class accused her of worshipping Satan because of the yin/yang sticker.

They didn't understand and had been influenced by their parents, most of whom were Christians living in the Midwest.

Yesterday, I came across the "Heart Sutra," an important "rule" or aphorism in Mahāyāna Buddhism.

One of the key phrases that immediately made me think of Taoism, Zen Buddhism and Bruce Lee was this:

Form is nothing more than emptiness,

emptiness is nothing more than form.

You can say it a bit more directly: "Form is emptiness; emptiness is form."

It is a widely quoted concept that is visualized in different ways.

Bruce Lee liked to say that we should "be water." He said, "If you put wat...

Empty Force - A Trap Door that Collapses Beneath an Opponent

empty force internal body mechanics internal self-defense kong jin Mar 19, 2021

Fifty years ago this summer, in 1971, I was working for my dad as a laborer in his ornamental iron business. I was 18 years old, had just graduated from high school and was soon to start college. My dad was very mechanical and was an artist with ornamental iron, doing everything from columns and railings to stairways in apartment complexes. I did not inherit his mechanical gene, so I was relegated to painting and helping carry materials.

One day, we were working on the third story of a new apartment building in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. The third floor balcony had some kind of temporary sheet metal flooring, but on this day, I didn't realize the flooring did not have support under it.

I was daydreaming and not being mindful about what I was doing when I went up to the third floor and stepped out on the balcony.

As soon as I stepped on it, the flooring gave way beneath my feet -- three stories up. It was as if I had stepped onto a trap door that suddenly, without warning, ope...

A Wise Taiji Master Once Said We Should Practice the Method Not the Form

body method chen style taijiquan studying tai chi studying taiji Jan 25, 2021

I have forgotten who said this, but it might have been one of Chen Fake's students, Feng Zhiqiang. He said we should practice "method, not form."

In the beginning, when we learn a form, we are trying to memorize the movements. Then, we are trying to memorize the movements so we can do the form from beginning to end. It takes a lot of work to remember a complete form.

But after we get the movements down and we can do a form from beginning to end, we must immediately force ourselves to go to the next level.

What you should be practicing is not the form but the method.

Every style of martial arts has its own "shen fa," or "body method." The Taiji form is not the only way to practice the method. You can do it by breaking out one movement from the form and working it. You can do it by practicing silk-reeling exercises.

In the style of Xingyi that I teach, body methods include taking ground, alternating relaxation and power, maintaining intent, ground path, peng jin, dan...

I Want to Throw Roundhouse Kicks on Muhammad Ali's Birthday

philosophy remain centered self-defense Jan 17, 2021

I want to throw roundhouse kicks. I have been very angry during the past week-and-a-half. I am working very hard to center myself. Let me tell you why.

Muhammad Ali would have celebrated his 79th birthday today if he had lived, but unfortunately, he died of complications of Parkinson's Disease in 2016.

The night he defeated George Foreman (picture at left) to regain the heavyweight title was the night I realized I needed to stop being a racist. It was October 30, 1974. Muhammad Ali was fighting George Foreman in a fight that was held in Zaire and called the "Rumble in the Jungle."

Foreman was so strong it was scary. He was knocking other heavyweights out cold. Most people expected Ali to be killed that night.

I grew up in the American South in the 1950s and Sixties. I saw "White Only" signs on drinking fountains and bathrooms. I remember when blacks were not allowed to sit with us in the movie theaters. They had to sit in the balcony.

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What Sean Connery and James Bond Taught Me About Fighting

self-defense Oct 31, 2020

Sean Connery passed away at age 90. The news swept across the world today, and if you are a man in my generation, it's a sad day.

My mother would not let me see a James Bond movie until the fourth Bond film "Thunderball" came out in late 1965. We were very conservative Christians, and she thought the movies were sinful because they showed drinking and (gasp!) sex between men and women who were NOT MARRIED!

She thought I would burn in Hell if I ever saw a James Bond movie.

But by the time "Thunderball" came out and I was nearly 13, she relented. My buddy Ed McCaw and I went to see it at a theater in downtown Lexington. We walked in during the long scene when the atomic bomb was stolen from the downed plane. We stayed all the way through the movie the second time through. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

I thought Connery was the coolest man who ever lived. The way he walked, the way he talked, and the slightly sarcastic, confident sense of humor had a big impact on me.

But the...

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Ken Gullette's Internal Fighting Arts

Interactive Video - You Choose the Tai Chi Fighting Application

Connecting is a Skill and Philosophy from Martial Arts You Can Use in Daily Life

Silk-Reeling Exercises Can Help You Develop Internal Body Mechanics

How Often Do You Meditate?

Firing Up the Inner Gyroscope Once Again - Finding My Center in the Hospital

Form is Emptiness - Easy to Ridicule if You Don't Understand

Empty Force - A Trap Door that Collapses Beneath an Opponent

A Wise Taiji Master Once Said We Should Practice the Method Not the Form

I Want to Throw Roundhouse Kicks on Muhammad Ali's Birthday

What Sean Connery and James Bond Taught Me About Fighting

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