by Jan Kallenbach

Sawai soshi, founder of Tai Ki Ken

Tai ki kenpo has been developed by our Japanese grand master Sawai Kenichi (1903- 1988) Sawai sensei taught it as a budo discipline and a way of life and certainly not as sport. Tai Ki is strongly connected with its Chinese counterpart Yi-chuan, also known as Da Cheng Chuan during a certain period.

Yi-chuan has been developed by grand master Wang Zhang Zhai (1885 –1963) from Beijing. Master Sawai had a classical budotraining in kenjutsu and jujutsu and went to China. Here he met and trained with the famous Yi-chuan master Wang, who was called “the national hand of China” then.

This meeting resulted in strong ties and with Wang’s permission Sawai sensei started his own school in Japan, which he called Tai Sei Ken in Japanese first and Tai Ki Ken later. Sawai sensei’s Tai Ki Ken school soon flourished in Japan and now his senior students continue his tradition and direct students like myself set forth his teaching and created their own schools.

Nowadays Yi-chuan is taught to us by master Li Yuan Ju (now age 77) from Beijing and it is trained and practised hand in hand with Tai Ki Kenpo in our dojo ShinBuKen in Amsterdam.

Zen standing discipline, ‘standing like a tree’

Realize: in Tai Ki, every thing starts and finishes with Stillness Training

Please take good notice of the following Tai Ki discipline:

We do know Fundamentals: 1= Ritsu Zen, 2= Hay, 3= Yuri + Neri (= waza, or technique developing) and Chi-kung, that will be shown here first, later on we will show the Tai Ki concepts.

1* Ritsu Zen

Every thing starts with Stillness Training: ‘Ritsu Zen’ So we start with the ritsu-zen posture as preparing, for deep relaxation and deep sensivity energytraining and meditational awareness. We have to open ourselves for the most original quality our cosmos is showing us… upon we even in our own micro cosmic systems will become aware of it…the quality of Tao: jing and yang…and finally will become able to arouse ‘ki’.We do call this exercise ‘training in stillness’…some people like to call it meditation.The term meditation can be misinterpreted as a way of training the mind only.Taiki and Yi-chuan are body-mind budo disciplines…they do not separate mind from body. Be careful!

When people get more feeling in the standing still exercise and master the

‘standing like a tree posture’ and do feel their yuan chi or original chi …we will introduce more postures. They all can help us to develop ‘ki’, something so important that Sawai sensei called his art Tai ‘Ki’ Ken.

ki

When we finish exercising Ritsu Zen we do the ‘small yuri form’

Small Yuri = swaying, pendeling of the tantien point. It is meant to continue the sensations of energy and deep feeling of ritsu zen and to keep notice of the two basic qualities of life: jing and yang.We take a small step to the left side and bring our shoulders, arms and hands out in a form like we are holding a ball. Move the arms and hands out and in, at least three times and then we do this moving on the right side. We come back to the basic standing position to close.

Standing still Training tatsu / or ritsu Zent

To close we bring our arms and breathing down several times.

Small yuri is a minimized form of the great yuri, which is one of three explicit forms of Taiki to be trained.It is always used to close a form or action, when we go to another and to regulate our breathing and tension when we have exerted ourselves.

small yuri swaying on the right side and on the left side, at one spot

After this, we come to the middle and we finish with the hakkè / jing power feeling. This is a kind of internal explosion typical for Taiki and we deliver this with a deep sound called...’haa’ or ’hawn!’

Nb. Like we mentioned usually we close all exercising with the small yuri swaying + hakkè. Senior students develop all different ways of delivering hakkè later on.

The element heaven/our spirit/energy coming from air and the awakening of our mental energetic powers have to become united through our hara-breathing. Combined with the energy coming from the soil...together they make the natural energetic sound of our hakkè.

Take a good breath and bring the air and energy down…use the energy you can feel with your feet coming from the element earth /the ground,combine this generated power with the art of natural breathing from the deep abdomen, and make a sound like coming from a empty barrel, or growl like an animal/ like bear-/or tiger-grudging.This will make the hakkè-sound.

pictures are showing hakkè (when gripped): the way of generating and directing ki energy, here shown as a way to free yourself from gripping

After the closing of exercise no 1 with small yuri and hakkè, we prepare for motion with displacement called Hay. Also done quiet and very balanced and harmonious in order to preserve the feeling of ki. This small yuri part of the training is the core of Tai Ki…meant to get the sensation of ‘ki’...”without ki no Taiki”…said our grandmaster.

2* HayHay = walking…moving body- /foot- and arm-work together in great harmony,walking and moving the trinity of the upper/ middle and lower parts of the body in harmony and without disturbances or unbalancing

After finishing training no 1, we continue with a displacement exercise where we do move a bit zig zag to our front and back with about five steps… called Hay. Japanese say ‘crawling’, because it is supposed to be done slowly and concentrated with arms spread out and our feet carefully placed only when we feel ‘full and empty’. We also call it ‘san t’i moving’, the union of heaven, man and earth in moving or more literally the union of hands, body and feet.

We practise several forms, low, medium and high. The left form showed here is more easy and the high form is more heavy.Take notice that hay has a strong feeling/intention of moving towards or backwards from somebody opposing you.As a guideline for slow moving: senior students go 5 steps forward and 5 steps back in 5 min. If you master that…all quicker moving will be no problem.

Hay walking

hay walking, low hay walking, high

Always one leg full and one leg empty, notice that we bend the back-leg so far, as if we sit on it comfortably. The hara is always kept straight and open and the shoulders are low. Keep the arms living, light and sensitive as to keep you well balanced (left) or as if you would catch a punch (right) or are anytime ready to punch yourself.

There is indeed no need to perform this walking quickly…no we do it as slow and deep and controlled as we can, because we regard this as a kind of ‘overload training’, as we want our legs and especially our back-leg to become strong.

After the hay exercise that can be even more heavy when we do the hands-high type combined with deeper walking…we come back to our starting point, raise our back and do the small yuri again, to stay supple and subtle.Here after we follow with the big yuri form.

3* Yuri

Great Yuri = swaying, pendeling of the tantien point like in the small yuri, but done with stepping forward and backward now

Now we make the movement larger and bigger with displacements zig zag front and back and like we say… with more excessive movement in three dimensions all in great harmony.Hands, arms, shoulders have to move altogether with feet, legs and hips in forward and backward direction like pulling and pushing an invisible opponent. Enlarged in 3 dimensions, and bigger because you have to feel bodily bigger now than while performing the small yuri on the place…this movement will help us later to feel how to deal with opponents and yet stay tactile and not rigid.It is a great help when one can accompany the movements with the breathing and feel the air literally go out and in.Breathe out through the almost closed mouth and in through the nose and we twist and rotate the arms a little bit when moving out and in too.Nb.

Later on, one will feel the great connection of the yuri exercise with the pushing hands exercise and the way you have to deal with gripping attackers.

great Yuri

Great Yuri , swaying to both sides with stepping diagonal footwork forward and backward

We usually walk zig zag front and back 5 or more steps…and as we feel…sometimes forward to the opposite site of the place or dojo, and then we go backward still facing the same direction. When we come to the starting place we close the great yuri form,

come to a neutral middle position with the two equally loaded and step out left to do the small finishing yuri left. We do this little yuri left and right minimal 3 times. This yuri is done with more careful attention for our tantien, and it looks like almost ónly this point is moving now. We close again in a neutral position on two full legs, bringing our ‘chi’ down and ‘shen’ up. We take a kamae (selfdefence posture) then, charge with air and energy and give our ki-breathing hakkè outburst of ki energy.

As one might have understood already, this hakkè is an important item in Taiki .The accompanying sound can be undirected and open and going in all directions like ringing ‘a bell in the valley’.

This is the first way of energetic kiai, inside starting but exterior oriented kiai. It can produce a big sound.It can also be directed and pointed in a special way as to apply ki as an answer to a certain grip to free yourself, or direct it in breaking a board. This is the martial way and second type of kiai.We call it ‘internal kiai’ . It starts inside and stays inside, to arouse more spontaneous ki power…the accompanying sound is also kept more inside, like in deep grumbling.It is the core of Tai Ki Kenpo, not so easy to imitate and seldom matched by other stylists.This energetic reaction moving has to work in all directions, against punching, grabbing, seizing/embracing, kicking, multiple attacks and attacks by weapons and put into form by our natural moving, spontaneous reactions and developed by our yuri it can be used anytime in our moving (= waza+)

The whole process of developing waza is called Neri, which can be translated as ‘polishing’.

Neri =< Waza,Neri means ‘kneading’ literally, so with neri sensei meant kneading the body (as raw material like clay) until it will get shape. By further polishing it, the fundamental moving will develop into

techniques.

When we finished our fundamental no 3, the big yuri + hakkè and master these fundamentals fully…we can start practising and developing our own movements and polish them (neri ) , until the movements finally becomes our waza.

Waza are techniques that work…you train them in order to master them until they work not only in one case, but in all cases…and under all circumstances…that is the meaning of real ‘waza’! So after the three fundamentals the technical way ahead of the kenpoka is open and free and after a while you can see people doing the same technique in different ways, i.g. in different spheres and directions or with different intentions.For the observer this can be confusing, but careful observation will make one see and learn that although the movements look different yet they can have a certain familiarity, because the used concepts and principles are the same.That is the reason why Taiki and Yi-chuan can be difficult to continue after a while, especially when training alone! Yet it can be the starting point of your own never ending way of budo and master-ship. Especially when you find out that even when training alone you can continue and develop because of your understanding of the principles. In this light, you will understand our masters who found it of no help to train series of fixed forms we have to master first.

No, our teacher told us convincingly: ‘don’t hang on forms…don’t copy them…make your own waza!’

This whole process of creating and polishing is called ‘neri’.

Chi-kung

So far the disciplines of postures and moving of zen – hay – yuri and the breathing exercises are enough to keep you supple healthy and sensitive for daily life.

One can practise these exercises whenever one needs or likes and the beneficial aspects do develop slowly but steadily when one repeats the exercises over and over…until internal awareness grows and one precisely can distinguish how one feels an how the energy balance is. It starts with the zhang zhuan standing like a tree exercise. This chi-kung exercise develops a lot of positive internal and external efficacies and after some corrections by a teacher can be maintained and practised alone.

It enhances the sensitivity for life quality and teaches us how to keep or spend or evoke energy…and stay supple, open and gentle.And when we talk about suppleness we do not only strive for suppleness on the outside -like every sportsman knows and wants to maintain- but we especially strive for ‘souplesse’ of our inside. And then we think of organs and nerves but also emotions and mind.

Sometimes I ask new students standing in zhang-zhuan/zen posture like above, if they are aware of their blood circulation and are able to feel their heart palpitation beating in their fingertips.A lot of persons can have problems in standing quiet, but after a while and after accommodation they stand correctly but still do feel nothing in their fingertips.This becomes -together with breating, deep relaxation and correct posture building- one of the entrances in Yang Sheng Kung training.After some time they do indeed feel some beating in their left index finger…but still not in the other fingers…and still not in the right hand and slowly they detect they are able to start feeling!

This is the ‘health side’ or chi-kung of TaiKi, also called Yang Sheng Kung.

If one however wants to go deeper and further and wants to study wushu as a way of selfdefence…it is necessary to study and practice the Tai Ki concepts.

Sport-management students training Chi Kung

Basic discipline however stays the routine-training from above to develop the inner awareness and the feeling of ‘ki’.

“ki wa nashi…Tai Ki wa nai ’’ …Sawai sensei said…”no ki …no Taiki”

So when a student wants to study more about martial arts and wants to develop himself, he needs above all to stay in good health and to ‘develop his ki ‘.Because by experience we know that being spirited and charged with ki are the main factors in a confrontation or a fight to decide between winning or loosing!

Nb.There is one problem with the Taiki nei-chia concept of attaining ki. If one is not open minded enough or willing to submit himself to ki training, or not prepared to investigate in ki training… mostly because one cannot grasp it immediately at will and can not wait for it to come…something that often plays a role with budoka who have already been training in their own way for a long time, and have their own experiences, or….if one has been educated with the idea that ‘hard = is best”, and never has learnt the shadow sides of this thinking…it will be difficult to achieve ki.

We need conviction, perseverance, patience and a good example to continue ki-training. And we have to practise it daily with intelligence and where ever we can.Sometimes people get an accident in their budo career that forces them to train in a other or new way with more attention to their inner moving factors. Then they can discover the ki-concept -let us say - by accident!Also I do know colleagues -exponents of the harder disciplines- who at an elder age look for a healthier way of training and start training Tai Chi Chuan or Chi Kung.

Like mentioned we can train Taiki where and when ever we want, also because ki training needs to be done daily and other all circumstances, because then it will manifest itself.We especially like to train outside under good conditions and near trees that produce good oxygen.With a good view and good atmosphere a kenpoka will feel relaxed and harmonious with nature.Inside and outside have become one and good yuan chi will come and give us energy and a mental balance.

being one with nature and it ‘s original chi (called yuan chi), the author is training han-zen at the costal side of the south of France near Marseille