How I Found Taiji
I’ll try not to bore you. But it’s not a thrilling story. There’s no unusual magic (just the normal stuff).
There’s no super-hero drama…here’s the simple version:
My whole martial arts paradigm collapsed.
It started in 1992, on the brink of my second-degree Shotokan black belt.
I served tables in a Holiday Inn restaurant in St. Cloud Minnesota. One of my co-workers chatted with me about my years of karate training, tournaments, and katas. Tim told me that he started Karate Lessons at the University and that they used pressure points.
I scoffed. (That’s ridiculous I thought…)
“Okay—” I said… “show me.”
He lightly grasped two points on my hand, turned my wrist, and WHOOP—my knees buckled….
That’s it.
Everything changed. His little lesson, in the middle of work, was instantly repeatable. I couldn’t not buckle my knees. It worked…every time. It was fairly practical, that little move (there are better, more practical moves)…was at least pretty-darn practical. And it was natural: as much as I tried to not let it buckle my knees, I could only pretend. It worked every time.
So I went to meet his instructors. I trained with Jack and Beverly Gustafson, at St. Cloud Karate Instruction for roughly a year and half. In 1993 they hosted an Erle Montaigue World Taiji Boxing Workshop. I attended.
My first introduction to Taiji was potent.
That’s how I found It.
What happened to you?
Why did you go looking…and how did you find Taiji?