Connections between Tai Chi and Yuishinkai Kobujutsu

It is no co-incidence that Tai Chi is the world's most popular health and martial art, with a growing following in South Africa. Thanks to the pioneering work and unique teaching methods of master Edward Jardine, head of the International Tai Chi Society, the ancient Chinese martial art is booming symbiotically alongside Yuishinkai Kobujutsu.

Before the late 1960s, Tai Chi was relatively unknown in South Africa, and restricted to only a few people in the Chinese community. The prevailing political climate of apartheid, with its endemic racial segregation, and draconian influence and effect on people's lives, made those who knew about Tai Chi and its prodigious benefits, reluctant to share outside the community.

But if you have something precious, and you don't share it, you stunt your own growth, says Jardine Sifu. He began his lifestime study of Tai Chi after the arrival in South Africa of master Tchoung Ta-Tchen in 1969. Tchoung Sifu taught the popular short form Yang Style Tai Chi, as well as the style's six-part long form, which he developed. In the young Edward Jardine, he found a hungry pupil, who was teaching a modern form of karate, and who knew very little about Tai Chi, apart from vague references to shadow boxing and health benefits. He soon fell under the spell of the slow and gentle art, with its emphasis on balance, harmony, flow, yielding and softness - not to be confused with weakness.

The more Jardine Sifu trained Tai Chi's soft, internal movements, the more he began to appreciate its complementary, balancing nature to the fast, external movements of predominantly hard martial arts. And the more he began to understand hard external martial arts work mainly for the bigger and stronger person with an aggressive bent. "When it comes to self-development and improvement through martial arts training," says Jardine Sifu, "the lesson must be to be truly interwoven in the technique." When Tchoung Sifu left South Africa, the mantle fell naturally onto Jardine Sifu, as students warmed to his unique philosophy. He began teaching Tai Chi to westerners in South Africa and later in other parts of the globe.

Because of the dearth of teachers in South Africa, he traveled to the East in the early 1970s, where he met teachers who have profoundly influenced his development, mentally, physically and spiritually. One is Tai Chi master Duan Yu Chang, whom he met apparently by chance, teaching a class in New Park in Taipei, Taiwan. As the two men made eye contact, they both instantly felt they had a destiny together. And indeed this has proved to be true. Like all the great masters, Duan Sifu is a humble, humorous and generous man, who happily passed on all his wisdom to his eager pupil, and continues to do so today. Jardine Sifu considers one of the most important lessons he has learnt from his sifu is to "look for the good in people and you find the good withing yourself".

It was a natural progression then, for Jardine Sifu to move away from the intensely competitive hard martial arts, to teach Yuishinkai Kobujutsu in 1976, offering it in unique combination with Tai Chi. He is now a Yuishinkai and Ryukyu Kobujutsu sixth dan graded by his sensei, Gansho (Motokatsu) Inoue, who is recognised as the highest graded master in the Okinawan weapons training.

Tai Chi and Yuishinkai Kobujutsu may outwardly look very different, but they are "branches of the same tree", different and the same, in that the philosophy is interwoven in the technique in the training. The lesson is to learn to avoid conflict, to flow with people and life, to find balance and harmony. He prefers his Tai Chi instructors to be trained in Yuishinkai Kobujutsu, as this helps them to understand the role of martial arts applications - both the positive and negative aspects of life and conflictual situations it presents.

His schools have evolved amoeba-like from the early days growing up in the rough, tough, dusty neighbourhoods on the East Rand. He opened a school teaching Tai Chi and Yuishinkai Kobujutsu in Judith Paarl from 1976 to 1983, then in a schul hall on Observatory Curve for a year, before moving to a building in Polly Street in downtown Johannesburg. The smelly exterior, parking difficulties and rampant crime led him to move to Queens High School in Kensington, and Paterson Park Recreation Centre in Norwood, where he has been for the past seven years. Mostly by word of mouth, Jardine Sifu's classes in both martial arts continue to grow. Among his students, he has taught three generations from one family, and has a greater age variety than all other styles, one factor being the non-competitive nature of his teaching, and emphasis on internal discipline and growth.

In both Tai Chi and Yuishinkai Kobujutsu, Jardine Sifu takes the traditional approach that the whole of life is "bujutsu" (martial arts) and everyone is a warrior/scholar. "The wisdom of the martial arts must apply to all of life, otherwise it's quite useless," he says, "because the most powerful opponent you'll ever have to face and conquer in life is yourself".