Ken Gullette's Internal Fighting Arts

A couple of cool things happened this week. On Monday, I drove to Rockford, Illinois to reconnect with my old instructors, Jim and Angela Criscimagna. Angela was visiting a friend, so Jim and I talked about taiji and he coached me through some Xinjia movements, giving me new insights into the body mechanics, the principles and the form.

I first met Jim and Angela in 1998. I was using a neijia listserve and seeing internal terms that I hadn't been taught -- terms like peng jin and ground path. I asked the list (Mike Sigman was one of the main contributors at that point) if there was anyone in the Chicago area that I could meet who could show me some of these concepts.

They directed me to Jim and Angela. I drove to their house one Saturday morning and within an hour, I realized that after spending over a decade studying tai chi, I was going to have to start over. I had really learned nothing about real taijiquan.

The best thing about a good teacher is this -- you should leave a class ...

I met a wonderful group of people in East Lansing, Michigan yesterday. Sifu Doug Lawrence sponsored me for an Internal Strength workshop. For six hours, we drilled on what I've identified as six key skills for the internal arts -- the ground path, peng jin, whole-body movement, silk-reeling, dan t'ien rotation and opening/closing the kua.

Sifu Lawrence teaches Yang tai chi, Hsing-I and Bagua. He knows what he's doing. I was really happy to meet an instructor like Doug -- open-minded, constantly researching, trying to get better and searching for good information. I could tell within a few minutes that he is an outstanding teacher.

We started with standing stake and I corrected some posture issues. From there, we worked on the ground path, peng jin, and then silk-reeling exercises. All of the exercises we did can be found on my Internal Strength and Silk-Reeling DVDs.

The foundation of internal strength is the ground path and peng jin. Chen Xiaowang likes to describe this in autom...

There is an article in the latest issue of Kung Fu Tai Chi magazine featuring me and my interpretation of the concept of "borrowing energy" in Tai Chi fighting. The Nov/Dec issue hits the stands today. The cover is pictured here at the left -- the headline for the article is the third one down on the left.

The article is written by my friend and fellow martial artist, Hector Lareau. He got the idea for the story when reading this blog, and wanted to explore the concept of borrowing energy a little deeper.

He came to our home, interviewed me, then my wife Nancy took photos as he threw different attacks on me and I used the borrowing energy concept to neutralize or bounce the attack away.

I was featured in an article in Tae Kwon Do Times back in 2006, but this is my first appearance as an instructor in a national kung-fu publication.

Borrowing energy is a simple concept and it's interpreted different ways by different teachers. Some use "roll back" as a means of borrowing energy....

10. Students play along and make applications appear to work even when they don't (to avoid making the teacher look bad).

9. You are taught movements but no self-defense applications.

8. Most of the class is eligible for Medicare.

7. The word "easy" is used to describe any of these three arts.

6. You are taught to turn the hips, not the dan t'ien (sometimes referred to as "waist").

5. You aren't shown how to maintain ground path and peng jin throughout all movements, even in "transitions" and stepping.

4. The teacher says that the 13 energies of tai chi are actual energies coursing through your body.

3. You are told that push hands is about sensitivity, not self-defense.

2. The teacher believes that high level masters (or he personally) can move you with their chi without touching you.

1. The top priority of the class is "chi cultivation."

Now, let me be clear -- some very good teachers hold classes for the elderly that focus more on health and meditation than on the martial ...

I spent the morning yesterday studying the energies and directions of Tai Chi. I have had some good teachers who have touched on these topics in class, but they've never really been organized in a way that brings it all together in a systematic approach to learning.

After a few hours of study and reflection, and getting up to practice some movements for even more insight into the physical mechanics, I had crystallized my thoughts -- and some outstanding information -- into five pages of a document that I'll put on the online school tomorrow, along with a video that I plan to shoot this evening with my students, demonstrating each of the 13 energies and the five moving directions of Tai Chi.

There are six main physical skills you need for good Tai Chi (and Hsing-I and Bagua). Along with the 13 energies and five moving directions, this makes up the core of an amazing martial art.

The Six Main Physical Skills:

1. Establish and maintain the ground path

2. Maintain peng jin at all tim...

In Taoism and Chinese culture, the term wuji (pronounced "woo-zhee") means a state of harm ony and balance -- emptiness, stillness and peace. It is limitless, infinite.

It is when everything begins moving and you lose balance that you also lose wuji.

In the Taoist view of the universe, if we were to look at it from a modern scientific view, the universe was in a state of wuji just before the Big Bang. There was a state of perfect peace and then all hell broke loose. Things separated into yin and yang. Dogs and cats living together -- MASS HYSTERIA! (Sorry, I watched Ghostbusters a lot when my daughters were little)

In Tai Chi, the goal is to maintain a sort of wuji -- balance and harmony; to remain centered. When someone attacks, and you must adapt and change to accept this person's force, your goal is to return to wuji -- the state of balance you were in before the attack. 

I enjoy working with people who have never studied the internal arts. Almost every time when a newbie is wo...

Jieh Jin is translated from Chinese as "borrowing energy." It's one of the many concepts that are abstractly described as "energies" in the internal arts.

As with each of these "energies," borrowing energy doesn't mean you're sucking the energy out of your opponent literally -- it isn't mystical, it's physical just like all the other skills of Tai Chi, Hsing-I and Bagua.

 These three photos show an exercise you can do to practice and demonstrate borrowing energy.

In photo 1, my partner is rushing at me to push me off my ground. He will push hard into my folded arms, using his momentum and weight. I'm establishing the ground path, maintaining peng, and setting up the body structure that I need for good internal mechanics.

In photo 2, he makes contact with his force, or energy. I ground it and give it no place to go but back at him. It actually feels as if it bounces back at him.

In photo 3, you can see him bouncing back slightly. All of the internal mechanics are coming into ...

Martial artists with any experience at all believe they're generating a lot of power with their movements. In my first kung-fu class as a student--way back in September, 1973--we stood and punched, snapping our hips with the punch to add power to the technique.

As I've studied and taught the internal arts, I had to learn body mechanics that are very different from the other kung-fu, taekwondo, and boxing instruction I had received in the past.

A little over a week ago, I held a workshop for all martial artists on the fighting applications of the Chen Tai Chi 38 form. Attendees included students and teachers from a wide variety of arts, from Shaolin and taekwondo to a Yang style teacher. There were white belt students and very high-ranking black belts.

And almost every one of them made one mistake. I knew they would, because everywhere I go--every martial artist I meet--makes this mistake.

Their movements are not connected from the ground through the body.  

Here are some photos ...

I stopped at a Border's bookstore the other day and looked for the latest issues of my favorite martial arts magazines.

There in the Sports section, I found Black Belt and Kung Fu Tai Chi among the MMA and wrestling and karate and TKD magazines. I thumbed through the magazines to find the latest issue of T'ai Chi magazine but it was nowhere to be found. 

And then I had an idea. I went to a different part of the magazine section where all the psychic, spiritual, religious and strange publications are. Sure enough, mixed in with all of this stuff was T'ai Chi magazine.

And there you have it -- the biggest problem facing the art of Tai Chi Chuan. Even a bookstore chain doesn't recognize it as a martial art, and places it with in its mystical and supernatural section.

I'm going to begin a little campaign to get Border's to put the magazine where it belongs -- in the martial art section. You can help by talking with the manager at each store you visit and request that it be moved.

Tai ...

This is a photo taken during a private lesson I had a few years ago with Grandmaster Chen Xiaowang. We did the lesson in the backyard of Jim and Angela Criscimagna in Rockford, Illinois.

I like to look over some of the notes I've taken over the years. It's hard to retain everything you're told during a martial arts lesson, so I try to write things down as soon as possible after leaving a class or workshop.

Chen Xiaowang says "natural is best." He also believes that until you learn proper structure, you shouldn't try to do tai chi movements in a very low stance. Form and balance are most important. Proper structure is more important than low stances. And it takes us years to get proper structure.

Good kung-fu, he says, is proper structure, not low stances.

There is one principle and three techniques involved in tai chi, according to Chen Xiaowang. He's worded it differently at different times, but the one principle boils down to "when one part moves, all parts move. When dan t'ien ...