With the Internal Martial Arts It Has To Be Shown

chen family taijiquan chen style taiji chen tai chi chen xiaoxing tai chi training Aug 14, 2007

I've studied several arts since 1973 -- Shaolin, wushu, taekwondo, boxing -- and attained ranks in Shaolin (brown belt) and TKD (green belt) before finding the internal arts.

The internal arts that I practice -- Hsing-I, Chen Tai Chi, and Bagua -- are the most difficult arts I've encountered. For a beginner, it's impossible to learn them properly from books, photos, or videos.

It Has To Be Shown (IHTBS).

My first encounter with top-level internal arts instructors (those with training in actual internal body mechanics) was Jim and Angela Criscimagna in Rockford, Illinois. They also introduced me to the Chen way of training and masters such as Chen Xiaowang and Ren Guangyi.

I met Jim and Angela after reading internal arts posts on the Internet that I didn't understand, using terms I'd never been taught. One hour after training with Jim for the first time, I drove away from Rockford realizing that I had to start over.

Not everyone can make that decision. We invest a lot of time, money, and mental energy on what we study. When faced with the fact that we haven't studied properly, haven't been taught properly, and may need to scrap much of what we've spent years developing, most people can't do it. They see the difficulty of real internal arts and they retreat to what's familiar. Sometimes, that includes the "pat-on-the-back" type of "aren't-we-great" and "we know the secrets" mentality that a lot of teachers who don't really have a clue drill into their students.

In Jim and Angela's classes, Jim would actually bring you over, take your hand, and put it on his stomach (a rather impressive one at that) and let you feel as he moved the dan t'ien and moved into the kua. By feeling that, I could try to recreate it.

This is something that can be tricky when a male teacher is working with female students. Fortunately, Angela was there to help with that.

The internal arts have to be shown. Until you have a qualified instructor who will let you feel the art, and the power of proper mechanics, and who will put hands on you to correct your posture and guide you through movements, you won't really understand how it works. And when you do understand, it will take years to develop it. You can't just take a lesson and practice a few weeks and get it.

The picture above shows me training with Chen Xiaoxing in Livermore, California in 2005. He is putting his hands on me to correct my stance. When I performed a movement, he would correct me and demonstrate it as I watched. My teacher in 2005, Mark Wasson, went into even more detail than Chen Xiaoxing did. None of this information is anything you can pick up reading books. It must be shown, accompanied by hands-on corrections.

We're all in a hurry. We all want mastery now. In the internal arts, it just isn't going to happen. I'm still working on getting "Buddha's Warrior Pounds Mortar" right. Heck, I'm still working on getting the opening right. But I know what I'm working for, after years of good hands-on training and instructors who could translate the Chinese teaching into concepts and principles that I could understand.

If it hadn't been shown to me, I never would be where I am. The other night I found a tape, shot several years ago, of me doing the Chen 19 form. It was so pitiful that I laughed. At the time, I knew I had a lot to learn. Looking at the video, I was stunned at how little I had going internally, but also excited at how I had improved over the years. One step at a time.

--by Ken Gullette

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With the Internal Martial Arts It Has To Be Shown

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