About Me

Wim Stultiens of Belgium, who has a popular website www.movingasone.be, asked me questions about myself and my reply is as follows:

Introduce yourself. What is your background? Where do you live? What is your profession?

I live in a small but beautiful city called Wellington, which is the capital of New Zealand. I am a librarian by trade. I love martial arts, especially the internal ones. Therefore, learning, practicing, researching and teaching Taijiquan and Yiquan is my favourite hobby.

I have had about 15 articles published in T’ai Chi magazine, and have recently written a book entitled Demystifying Tai Chi Chuan, published by Booksurge Publishing Company. My book will be available at www.amazon.com from March 2007. You will soon be able to see a synopsis of this book on my website http://www.oocities.org/tukylam/.

Can you tell us something about why and how you originally started with Taijiquan? What was your motivation then and what is your motivation now?

I started learning Taijiquan from 1972 because of poor health. When I was at high school, I saw many people learning and practicing Taijiquan on my school play ground every early morning. Among the practitioners, many are elderly people, who are healthy and live long. Their good health and longevity inspire me.

Later on, I was attracted by the martial aspects of Taijiquan, which motivates me to go further from the Taiji form into its substance – its structure, the internal strength, its martial applications, push-hands, etc. Today, the desire to be a better internal stylist motivates me further ahead. I have moved on to Yiquan, a new style of Chinese martial arts created in 1920’s by Wang Xiang-zhai. (Yiquan is an offspring of Xingyi quan but it does not have forms or routines.) Yiquan emphasizes on standing practice to develop internal power, which is very much wanting in Taijiquan. The power and techniques of Yiquan complement Taijiquan very well.

I train about two and a half hours every day – one hour and a half on standing practice and one hour on the Taiji form and Yiquan shi-li (testing or moving our energy). Two hours and a half a day may seem too much for many westerners, but it is the minimum amount of time we need to train if we want to improve. (This is only for amateurs. In China, some people train full time – eight hours a day. These people are much better than amateurs.) However, for health purposes, half an hour on standing practice and half an hour on the Taiji form are good enough.

What does a good training session look like to you? (Qigong, silk reeling, meditation, posture correction, stretching...)? Is it similar to Master Ma Hong's training methods?

In a push-hands practice, a good session will be: being able to neutralize and unbalance my opponent at ease. In standing or form practice, I always adhere to the principle “feeling strong and yet comfortable.” I will make sure my training will not drain me, and that I always feel refreshed after training. This training principle makes me feel good, and improves my health and skill steadily.

To be able to feel strong with plenty of qi and jing flow, we need to have correct postures such as sitting on our legs, lifting up the top of our head, loosening our shoulders, and dropping our elbows. To be able to feel comfortable, we need to relax and concentrate (using mind). But more importantly we need to be able to have our hips sit on our legs properly, which will require a lot of practice to get it right.

Taiji and Yiquan practitioners place their hips on top of their legs differently. Taiji practitioners usually pull in their buttocks and keep their torso perpendicular to the ground while Yiquan practitioners will have their buttocks stick out (to the back) for at least half an inch, and have their torso tilt forwards by about 3 to 5 degrees. I have practiced with both postures and find the latter posture much superior, as the former one restricts our movements and cannot strong produce. Sitting on our legs with our hips slightly sticking out (to the back) and have our torso tilt slightly forwards is an excellent posture. We can be more relaxed and can use our hips to move my whole body very easily. We will have power and yet very relaxed and comfortable, and we can move more quickly. This is the key to learning all internal martial arts.

I practice the two Chen routines that I learned from Sifu Ma Hong. With the influence of Yiquan, my training methods, which are a combination of two martial arts systems, are not exactly the same as those taught by my teacher.

Is Yiquan a kind of Qigong?

Yes and no. Yiquan standing practice and shi-li look very much like Qigong exercises. You can practice Yiquan standing practice and shi-li like any other kind of Qigong. In fact, some Yiquan teachers call it Yiquan Qigong.

But this is the lower level of Yiquan. At a higher level, the purpose of your training is to develop strong internal strength and use it in push-hands and fighting. If you aim for the higher level, you can motivate yourself to train longer and improve unceasingly. You also benefit more from improving your health. People who do Yiquan for sefl-defence usually do not consider Yiquan a branch of Qigong, but a system of martial arts. Yiquan is the most practical Chinese martial art. There is a lot more on this topic in my book.

When I look at your picture, your position immediately strikes me. It looks firm and relaxed. Can you tell us something about this "paradox"?

My photos look OK because I have trained hard for many years. It is the result of hard work. If you want your photos to look good, you need to train with correct body alignment. Correct postures will give you strength (without having to tense up your muscles), and if you are relaxed and concentrate, your photos will look firm and relaxed.

My answer to your previous question “on a good training session” also partly answers this question or yours.