Ken Gullette's Internal Fighting Arts

It’s impossible to trace the origin of many chi kung exercises. The Chinese people have a military history that dates back thousands of years, and the value of exercise and stretching were probably recognized very early as being beneficial for the success of battlefield troops.

The images above – and below – were found in the tomb of King Ma, who lived before Christ, died in 103 BC and was buried with many documents, including military training manuals. The documents were discovered when his tomb was found in 1973. Some of the images are very similar to chi kung exercises, including movements from the Eight Pieces of Brocade.

I first learned the Brocade exercises as chi kung, but the more I practiced, the more I came to believe that these were also used as stretching and leg conditioning exercises for Chinese soldiers. It is possible that the chi kung interpretation was added many centuries later.

The Eight Pieces of Brocade is not a mystical or magical routine. Practicing the...

Cheng Man Ching demonstrates rooting, probably in the 1930 or 40's.

Cheng Man Ching was one of the first notable people to bring Tai Chi to America. He was born in 1902, studied some Tai Chi before meeting and becoming a student of Yang Chengfu, historically known as the most famous early teacher of Yang Tai Chi. Cheng studied with Yang Chengfu for six years.

By 1946, Cheng Man Ching had developed his own short version (37 movements) of Yang Chengfu's long Tai Chi form. He performs it in the video below.

He moved to New York City in 1964, no doubt causing quite a stir since Tai Chi was mysterious at the time. In 1967, he teamed with Robert W. Smith and T.T. Liang to write a book about Tai Chi. He died in 1975, but by that time, as Tai Chi teachers are bound to do, he became a legend.

I am grateful that he was a pioneer who helped to bring the internal arts to America. When I watch video of him performing, or one of his more famous students, William C.C. Chen, I am always disapp...

My favorite poem comes from a book I bought back in the Seventies, Man of Contrasts, by taekwondo master He Il Cho. Here is the poem:

I can find peace amidst the city's roar

In the dry, frayed face of confusion

the exhausted hour.

My peace is cradled within.

Where does peace come from? I started finding the answer to that question when I began practicing Qigong in 1987, about 14 years after I began studying martial arts and reading about Taoism and Zen Buddhism. Qigong (also spelled Chi Kung) took it to another level. Before long, the ability to center myself in tense situations or moments of crisis began to develop somewhere inside me, and it was noticed, both by me and by others.

Around 1988, when a wall cloud was passing outside the newsroom where I was preparing the 6:00 News (I was the producer), people were racing and shouting in the newsroom, wheeling cameras outside to broadcast it live. I was trying to write some final teases and copy for the 6:00 News. It was total chao...

In recent days, members of my website have asked some questions about breathing during Taiji, Xingyi, Bagua, and Qigong.

I replied to one question last night, then saw that the great Kevin Costner movie Bull Durham was playing on cable. I turned it on and within a minute or two, Susan Sarandon gave Tim Robbins some pitching advice.

"Breathe through your eyelids," she told him, "like the Lava Lizards. It's Mayan, or Aztec, I get them mixed up."

I laughed pretty hard because of the good timing. The "breathing through his eyelids" joke was repeated throughout the movie.

This is the type of Hooey that a lot of internal arts instructors give their students. Gullible students are told to "breathe through their skin" or other silliness. It would be fine if the instructor said that this is simply a technique of mental visualization, but there is no qualification, and that encourages people without critical thinking skills to believe that they can breathe through their skin.

But it gets ev...

Push the Mountain from the Bagua 8 Main Palms form.

I am putting together my 8th Kindle ebook this week on the Cheng style Bagua 8 Main Palms Form. In working with more than 300 photos for the ebook, a couple of effective techniques have become very obvious for giving myself feedback on my own movement and posture.

Videotaping yourself is one of the best ways of seeing yourself as you are actually performing the movements. We all think we look like Chen Xiaowang or Jet Li when we are doing our forms and techniques. More often than not, we more closely resemble Jim Carrey.

I recommend shooting video as you are performing a form at fast speed, then perform it at a slower pace. Both times, be as specific as you can on precision, power, and body mechanics. Then watch the video. Run it normally and then in slo-mo if you can. Ask yourself if your structure is sound, if your stances and stepping is right, if the timing of your hand movements is right -- there are a dozen things you cou...

I have been warning about the martial con men for 15 years -- the teachers who claim to use "Empty Force" -- or chi -- to knock down students without touching them. 

First of all, they completely misunderstand what Kong Jin, or "empty force" actually means, but they throw in dishonesty because they know students who really need to belong to the group will play along.

But what if some martial artists don't play along? What happens? This is what happens. Every time. 

I tell my stories and explain my experiences so that other people might gain insight that helps them in their martial art journey. This is the kind of story you don't read very often. It is about one of my teachers, and it is not pleasant. But I think you know by now that I try to keep it real. So here goes. 

Mark Wasson (left) in 2005 when he certified me with Chen Xiaoxing's

Chen Village Taijiquan School.

I first heard of Mark Wasson when he wrote an article for Tai Chi Magazine on his experiences training in the Chen Village. He was about my age (I am now 60 and he may have been 61). In one ten-year span, he made 15 trips to the birthplace of Taijiquan to get down and dirty, sweat, work, train, have bones broken, and to get deep insights into the real art of Taiji. I met him after I had been training for a few years with my first Chen Taiji teachers, Jim and Angela Criscimagna. 

Mark Wasson was a deeply troubled man, but a pioneer and trailblazer who introduced a lot of peo...

I am fascinated by the self-defense applications of Chen Taijiquan. There are no transitions, no "wind-ups" to self-defense techniques. Every action in a Tai Chi form is a fighting technique.

I recently published an ebook with 239 photos demonstrating and explaining more than 100 self-defense applications of the Chen 19 form (click here to find the ebook on Amazon). In 2008, I did a 3-DVD set demonstrating more than 400 fighting applications in Laojia Yilu. All of my DVDs go deeply into the self-defense applications of each form I do in Taiji, Xingyi or Bagua. In my view, the true intent of these movements is contained in the self-defense applications. There are people who disagree with me, but in my opinion you simply can't do the form well if you don't understand how it feels to use the movements against an attacker. That's what they were created to do. 

The photos here show the first appearance of the movement "Hidden Hand Punch" in the Chen 19 form -- the short form created by ...

There was an interesting comment online last week. An internal martial artist (I'm not sure if he is a teacher or not) said that when students begin studying, they should not ask questions. They should understand that they do not know enough to ask questions. Instead, they should do what their teacher tells them to do, over and over until they progress for a while. 

He said that ego makes us think we need to know more than our teacher is telling us, and we need to "let it go" and follow. Just follow, and all things will become clear in time.

I could not disagree more.

I first began teaching at a small fitness center in Iowa. Rich Coulter and Chad Steinke were among my first students. They were both teenagers at the time, and when they walked in, they sized me up like hired guns. It was my first week as a teacher -- October, 1997.

As I showed both of them basic techniques that I taught at the time -- corkscrew punch, sunfist punch, front snap kick, roundhouse kick, etc. -- they woul...

I have written an ebook with 239 photos and detailed instruction for 106 self-defense applications that are found in the short Chen Taiji 19 Form. The ebook is titled Chen Taiji Self-Defense - Fighting Applications from the Chen Family Tai Chi 19 Form. It is available on the Amazon Kindle store for $4.99 and will play on any device with the free Kindle app installed.

The Chen 19 Form was designed by Chen Xiaowang in  1995. He was asked by students around the world for a shorter form to fit into their busy daily lives. Also, in my opinion, I believe he wanted to provide a Chen family answer to the Simplified Yang 24 Form that has become the most popular Tai Chi form in the world.

The Chen 19 Form takes about 5 to 6 minutes to perform if done slowly -- less time if you do it with power and speed. It is based primarily on the longer form, Laojia Yilu. Movements are a bit conservative, with less obvious silk-reeling, than the Chen 38 or Xinjia forms. This is the first form that I teach...