I started this quest in 1986 when I was considering taking up a martial art to divert my attention away from the shopping mall. I just moved to Texas to take the next step in personal and professional growth. New job, first apartment, 1500 miles away from family and friends. Still hadn't found Tai Chi instruction a year later, but on a visit home, my brother demonstrated some practical Kempo self-defense. When I got home, I found a Kenpo school which emphasized more self-defense and less competition as the other schools I looked at. I figured even if I quit in a year, I'd still have the self-defense knowledge.
Not a year into Kenpo, I found a Tai Chi class at UT Arlington (Feb 1988) taught by Mr. Ho and Master Tu, sixth generation from the first Yang. Ooo, should I? Could I do both at the same time? I figured it was like doing a heavy double major in college, like Mathematics and Engineering. I didn't tell anyone for another year that I was learning another art. I was kind of stuck in Kenpo because I was dating someone who was fanatic.
Whoops, somehow I stayed with Kenpo long enough to get black belt. Then another. A month short of another, I moved back to my family. That is when all martial arts stopped. I tried to continue my training but life issues, #1problemchild (Mom) pushes down the priority of dreams like this, especially when they're uncompensated. That's when I made my Tai Chi webpage. It was my "always available" reference before cloud hosting was a twinkle in anyone's twinkle. That lasted nearly 10 years before Geocities stopped hosting personal web pages.
For the last 5 years, I've been trying to get back to my teachers for some refresher lessons. I've forgotten all of it, and #1problemchild keeps me from getting back there. Startng this blog, I am accepting it won't happen. I've looked up & down YouTube, I can't find forms in the same sequence as they were taught to me. I can see how this happens in Tai Chi, especially because Chinese always hold back. My mother (is Chinese) has always told me to hold back some knowledge when I teach something. I don't believe that's right. Anyway, as this applies to Tai Chi, that means then next generation is less true and then generation after is less & less true to the original art. I see that happening in Kenpo.
It's one thing to evolve, take what works for you from one art to another. But then it's a different art. Different art, different name. What if you don't have the whole art before you pass it to the next generation? Same art, but weaker for all the holes in the knowledge base (the whole picture.) This is how the art gets watered down. So I know where my holes are. Oh my, they've gotten as big as sink holes. This is my attempt to fill in those holes.
So why don't I just pick a few forms from the web and follow their sequence of postures, after all it's still Tai Chi. It's the same motion, just rearranged, right? Um---not for me, not exactly. I've got original audio recording to follow and to pace me. It's in Chinese, and I don't understand it. I used to use audio markers to know I was on the right track. I hope to find a way to add it to this site eventually, if I can find a way to digitize it.
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