Two big questions were consuming me when I moved to San Francisco in 1973: Can I regain the health I am rapidly losing as a twenty-something sedentary adult? And why can’t I sit still and meditate? I hoped that studying “Kung Fu” would answer them both.
Settled in San Francisco, the phone book revealed many ads about “building confidence, learning self-defense”, but the one that grabbed me simply said, “Ancient art of White Crane Gung Fu. Embrace the immovable but ever-flowing Tao”. 18 months later, after two hours a day, six days a week, cracked ribs, broken fingers, (not great for a guitar player,) I had learned a lot about Chinese martial arts, and it had reawakened an interest in the enigmatic art of “Tai Chi”. Years before, I had seen grainy black and white fotos of a peculiar looking Chinese master in the Whole Earth Catalog; “The Dance Of Defense”, they called it.
Interesting… Finally, I quit Gung Fu and signed on with 83 year old Kuo Lien Ying, the city’s most illustrious Tai Chi master (pictured).
His classes met 365 days per year in Chinatown at 5 a.m. Attendance was mandatory. “Old School”, you might say.
This was my introduction to Tai Chi, and I found that it satisfied several needs for me: As a physical discipline, it helped maintain a healthy body. Done well, Tai Chi looks wonderfully effortless, but I learned that “attaining effortlessness requires effort.” Second, I learned that Tai Chi was a form of meditation that worked for me! It required a kind of emptying of the mind, but that emptiness was not complete, because one was mindful of the many nuances of Tai Chi movement. So, instead of thinking of “no thing”, you thought of “one thing”…and it wasn’t as boring as sitting meditation, because you were moving and thinking about the imagery that guided what you were doing.
With Master Kuo, I learned torturous standing meditation exercises and the ancient Kwan Ping style of Tai Chi Chuan. In this patriarchal tradition, it would have taken many years to be allowed access to the deep essence of Tai Chi. For that, I’d need more open-hearted teachers, and I set out to find them…tune in next post!
Rolly Brown's Bucks County Tai Chi 