Ken Gullette's Internal Fighting Arts

In 1975, I bought my first copy of The Tao of Jeet Kune Do, by Bruce Lee. It was a paperback copy. For Christmas in 1976, I was given a hardbound edition. I still have both copies.

This year -- 2011 -- Nancy gave me the Expanded Edition of Tao of Jeet Kune Do for Christmas. As I started reading it again, it really brought back memories of just how influential these writings were when I was 22 years old.

Growing up in the Bible Belt (Kentucky, Georgia, Florida) in the Fifties and Sixties did not provide opportunities for a young guy to think outside the fundamentalist church. Anything that wasn't understood was Satanic, including the Beatles, according to ministers in my church. Actually, it was a Sunday School lecture against the Beatles that first made me realize that the religion might be full of crap. If they would lie about the Beatles just to prove a point, what else would they lie about? It started me on the journey that led me to reject that sort of narrow-minded thinking. T...

I'm making the switch.

When I began teaching the internal arts, I considered whether to write "Tai Chi" or "Taiji."

On mainland China, Taiji (or Taijiquan) is the accepted translation style, known as pinyin.

Tai Chi (or T'ai Chi Ch'uan) is the Wade-Giles method of translation, developed by two men (Wade and Giles).

In 1997, I chose to use Tai Chi because that is the spelling most commonly known. That's the spelling you saw in newspapers and magazines such as T'ai Chi magazine. When I advertised my classes, I wanted the general public to see the ad and understand what "Tai Chi" meant. I didn't think they would understand that "Taiji" was the same thing.

It was purely a marketing decision, even though I knew that "serious" practitioners of the art used the term Taiji.

In recent months, I've started using both terms in my writing, and you might still see a Tai Chi pop up for search engine reasons, but for the most part, I'm changing the way I spell the art to Taijiquan, or Taiji.

Today, Colin Frye came over to the Kung Fu Room and for one hour, we drilled three techniques over and over and over.

The techniques can be found in the Bagua Fighting Skills section of the website -- Bagua Keywords.

We practiced Threading, Hooking, and Turning.

First we practiced proper form, then one would throw multiple attacks in a realistic way and the other would use threading to deflect the attacks. After a while, we worked hooking in a similar way. Then we worked on turning, which is very effective up close.

This was a satisfying practice because we slowed down, selected three techniques and practiced them repeatedly. There are a lot of techniques on my website, and a lot of principles. But just seeing a video or learning a technique in class and practicing it a few times will not make you good at it. Practicing all the keyword techniques in an hour won't help you to improve.

The key to mastery is practicing each technique thousands of times, solitary and with a partner.

I'm a fir...

We were videotaping a lesson for the instructional website a few days ago -- basic principles of stepping in Hsing-I Chuan.

You begin in San Ti, and whatever you do next, your ultimate goal is to establish balance and return to San Ti.

You can attack, defend, take your opponent's ground (one of the primary objectives in Hsing-I), but as soon as possible, your mission is to return to San Ti.

The same is true in Tai Chi. An opponent attacks -- force comes in. You relax, adapt, neutralize the force, counter, all the while seeking to return to wuji - absolute balance, centered both physically and mentally.

Bagua is the same. As you change and adapt to multiple attackers, you try to maintain your center, capture and control the center of your attackers, but with each movement, your ultimate goal is to return to the centered dragon stance.

Wuji is a state of absolute balance -- of nothingness. From a martial perspective, it's a state of supreme awareness within relaxation. Once you ...

I've been interested in the concept of being "one" with nature (or the Universe) since the early Seventies. I was first inspired by the Kung-Fu TV show -- fascinated by the "flashbacks" and the morality and philosophy of the Shaolin monks. 

"Standing," as it is often called, is the most important exercise in Taijiquan. It's also known as Zhan Zhuang. Translated from Mandarin, that means "standing like a post." 

When Nancy and I moved into our new home a month ago, I found an ideal spot for Standing Stake. It's in a corner of my deck, surrounded by trees with a deep yard below. Yesterday morning, a young buck was at the edge of the yard below, eating leaves from low-hanging trees. His antlers were pretty short. He stopped to stare at me for a moment, wondering if I was friend or foe, then lost interest and began munching again. On the tree a few feet away, a chipmunk ran up and down.

It's not difficult to feel "one" with nature here.

Standing Stake is useful for a lot of reasons. ...

One of the effective techniques used in Bagua and Taiji to unbalance an opponent occurs when the opponent steps toward you, or you step toward them.

In Bagua, this is called by some the "bagua foot." It's a hooking step that sets you up to apply pressure on your opponent's calf and cause them to lose their balance.

In the first photo, Kim Kruse (on the left) takes a step toward Colin Frye. She's stepping with her right foot. He hooks his left foot behind her right ankle.

In the second photo, Colin presses forward with his shin, applying pressure against Kim's calf. This causes her left shoulder to move backward and to the side.

In photo 3, Colin has taken advantage of the turning of the shoulder -- he pulls on the shoulder and Kim falls backward.

This is a great internal technique. Remember, the idea of internal kung-fu is to unbalance your opponent and take advantage of the window of opportunity that becomes available when they lose their balance.

You remain centered --...

What do we do about the image of Taijiquan when the world believes its a slow-motion exercise for health and meditation designed for the elderly?

How do we show it for what it is -- a powerful martial art?

One thing that would help is for Tai Chi teachers to stop pretending it's mystical -- that you can control a motivated, violent adult with your mind and with something vague called "intent."

Here is a video on YouTube showing Wang Peisheng, a famous (now deceased) Wu style Tai Chi master demonstrating push hands.

The principles he describes are great, but as he demonstrates, he uses a partner who is willing to fall in dramatic ways so the master looks good.

The problem is -- it doesn't work like this, and any decent martial artist who sees this knows it's a crock. Anyone who has ever fought another human being knows none of this works the way it does here. 

Here's another video that shows the fantasy of Tai Chi -- not the reality. It involves another famous Wu style master, ...

I love seeing the look in the eyes of new students who come in thinking of Tai Chi as a gentle means of "moving meditation" and then they find out what it really takes.

I have a couple of wonderful new students -- great young people -- who started two or three weeks ago. Last night we were working on the double-hand silk-reeling exercise, as I introduce them to the body mechanics required for taijiquan.

"You must have legs of steel," one student said after we had practiced a while and they were ready to stop and rest while I was still demonstrating and practicing with them.

Actually, I lost a lot of leg strength when I had my brush with death about 18 months ago and I'm still trying to regain it, but the comment last night made me laugh, and it also drove home just how difficult taiji really is.

When I've trained with my teachers and with members of the Chen family, as in the photo at the top of the page showing me training privately with Chen Xiaoxing, I've generally come close to...

Some people are living in the Twilight Zone.

I've been through a lot during the past three years. The onset of atrial fibrillation, three procedures to try to fix it, and the horrible side-effect, which was the closing of my left pulmonary veins.

No blood is going to my left lung. No blood is being oxygenated by the left lung because no blood can go from my left lung to the heart.

The same procedure that caused my pulmonary veins to shut down also paralyzed my right diaphragm. So I'm living -- and doing kung-fu -- with 2/3 of one lung.

It can be a challenge.

For over a week at Cleveland Clinic in late 2009, I was on a ventilator. The photo above is from that time. I nearly died twice. My weight dropped from 206 pounds to 157. I lost a lot of muscle. I looked like a concentration camp victim. I was determined to recover and to do kung-fu again -- tai chi, hsing-i and bagua. It has been a struggle. Even though I'll never be able to use my left lung, and the right diaphragm is stil...

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 ...