I didn’t have much martial arts background. If I remembered correctly, I took 5 lessons of judo when I was 14 or 15, and that would be it. I didn’t even get a chance to buy and wear the uniform before I stopped going. In the fall of 2009, I happened to watch one TV series and one movie related to Taiji. They both made an impression on me. I really liked the TV series, as it presented the idea how taiji could be used to fight. Although the movie wasn’t particularly good, it talked about a man who left his family to study taiji. Around that same time, I learned that someone was teaching taiji in the gym at work for free. I went together with a couple of my friends for the first class. The instructor was teaching Chen Style Taijiquan. At the time, I didn’t even know that there were so many different styles of Taijiquan. I just followed along, and I found that it was a good exercise as I sweated quite a bit. I played basketball for an hour once a week, and I only did other sports for pleasure occasionally.

My friends stopped going after once or twice, and I continued to go. For the most part, I was able to remember the chereography of the moves I learned, however, I wanted to look for a video online to remind myself anyway. I searched for “Chen Style Taijiquan”. Oh man, I then found there were so many: Old Frame, New Frame, Large Frame, Small Frame, Lao Jia, Xiao Jiao, and besides there were also Yang, Wu, Sun, Hao, and many others. However, I couldn’t find one that matched mine for a while. I started to watched quite a number of taiji videos, and I still do today. Finally, I found the one, which was Chen Style Hunyuan Xinyi Taiji 24. I liked Chen Style because it was more Kung Fu-like as inspired by the TV series. During the class, I started asking questions about the reasons for certain movements (I guessed I was trying to understand their applications, so I knew why I needed to do them in a certain way).

One particular movement I asked about was why I needed to make a small circle with my left wrist with the fingers kept touching the belly button (It was part of six sealings four closings). I couldn’t figure out the significance of that movement myself. Unfortunately, the instructor couldn’t satisfy my curiosity either. I started thinking that I should probably go to a formal school. For convenience I looked for a school in my area, and there was only one. The school taught a number of different styles, and the website was fairly informative about their differences, but the new class wouldn’t start until Jan 2010, so I had to wait.

While I was waiting, I stumbled upon your videos. The one video that stood out was the Basic Foundation Trailer shot at Victoria with beautiful fall colours. That was more like a professionally made video than an average taiji video available on YouTube. The name Practical Method also made an impact. Wasn’t that what I was looking for? Another important element was that you were coming to Toronto in 2 weeks.  That was back in November 2009.

Three years and nine workshops later, I am hooked onto Practical Method.  Thank you very much for all your teachings in Taiji and non-taiji, including general learning, business issues, interpersonal relationships.  In order to formally recognize you as my teacher, I am applying to become your disciple.

Regards,

Kelvin