It's Easy To Close Your Mind Off to a Better Way of Martial Arts

studying internal gongfu studying tai chi studying taiji Sep 13, 2024

Th photo at the top shows me, Ren Guangyi, and my first Chen style Taijiquan teachers, Jim and Angela Criscimagna, about a year after I met and began studying with them.

I had studied a version of Yang style for 11 years by the time I met him, but within one hour, as he explained Chen style and demonstrated some body mechanics to me, I knew I had to start over in Taijiquan. I had won medals with the Yang 24 in competition, but when I studied with Jim, new information about body mechanics and principles flew at me like from a firehose. It was overwhelming.

I was a "black sash," teaching the system I had learned, and now, I was learning just how empty my art was, and how little I knew about internal strength and internal movement.

It would have been the easy thing to do, when faced with something of higher quality, to retreat back to what I was already doing. Wouldn't that have been easy? I could have said, "That's not my style," or, "I study a different frame." I saw this photo a couple of days ago and the memories came flooding back -- the feeling I had trying to understand these strange but sophisticated details -- a "black sash" feeling like a child, like a complete beginner. But I stayed with Jim (and Angie) and took one baby-step at a time. I'm so glad I did. Knowing them opened the door to a new world, a new depth of martial arts.

The moral of this story, boys and girls is this: Be open to new information and different (maybe better) ways of doing things, even if it isn't convenient, even if it is a different style, and even if it means starting over. Yes, it's the easy thing to do to ignore it. But it's a far more satisfying thing to change your course and travel a more complex, difficult, and higher-quality road.

--by Ken Gullette

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It's Easy To Close Your Mind Off to a Better Way of Martial Arts

Try Two Weeks Free and Get Step-by-Step Training in Taiji, Xingyi and Bagua from Basic to Advanced Skills with No Mystical Mumbo-Jumbo

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