Internal Arts

I consider my start in neijia to be 1980, when I first joined the Ginsoon Tai Chi Club on Harrison Avenue in Boston MA. I realized at that time that there was a distinction to be made between external martial arts and internal martial arts, having dabbled in Taekwondo as Navy enlistee, Kenpo as undergrad, and a Zheng Manqing derivative of T'ai Chi Chuan in graduate school. But just two months after I moved to Boston to begin my professional career in computer science, I started learning taijiquan from Chu Ginsoon, a 5th generation family disciple of Yang Shouzhong, 4th generation descendant of the Yang family Taijiquan lineage.

I persisted at the club in Boston, learning the basics of the entire public curriculum over the next 5 years, and then continued for another 6 years refining and extending my understanding of all the solo forms and two person practices, resulting eventually becoming a senior student assisting with instruction and training of students junior to me. The final 12th year with Sifu Chu Ginsoon was spent in weekly private instruction exclusively, no practice with other members of the club in publicly attended sessions during that year.