You have to be straight before you can be circular

In the 3 years I spent with Mike, I probably learned 10 things that were worthwhile. Mike never taught me any of these things. They were all things that he taught to the group at large. He focused on the people he wanted to teach while I and the other people stood on the outside and watched.

I think Mike's arrogance caused him to make a mistake. From his point of view. I have related how I kept a very small profile in the group to avoid giving Mike a reason to actively confront me. The act worked. Mike accepted that I was worthless and hopeless. This caused his urge for secrecy to slip one or two or three times so I was able to actually learn something.

Mike was very secretive about stuff. He basically taught Jeff and Lonnie, then whichever of the women was his current favorite. The rest of us were there, but he never paid any real attention to us. We were hopeless in his eyes. And there was a group of 30 women 100 feet away that would fawn all over him. What choice would you make?


I have described how the Sunday classes started out withe the Ba Dua Jin exercises for warm ups. Then the entire class performed Tai Chi. Then we separated into groups for Ba Gua practice.

Mike NEVER taught the Tai Chi in class. In 3 years, only towards the very end did he even make an attempt to talk to us individually about Tai Chi. His attitude was that anyone joining the class could follow along.

Now that I think about it, that was a load of bullshit.

Mike met the women every week at some private meeting. During these meetings with the women, he taught them the Tai Chi. He worked with them on it so they could learn it.

Lonnie already knew Tai Chi. Jeff was of course a quick study and picked it up right away. George, James, Steve, and Peter were friends on a personal basis. They would see each other outside of class so they could work with each other.

Jeff and Lonnie of course mimiced Mike. They would not teach or talk about the Tai Chi to the rest of us. They would be polite and smile and make comments. But they never really helped or taught.

What does all that mean? It means that basically I was the only one not recieveing helpful instruction in Tai Chi. I think about that now and shake my head at the rudeness of it. I knew it back then. It was one of the things I ignored like the traps set up to get me to leave. It was just another rude act that was supposed to irk me so I would leave.

I would never leave. I knew Mike was good and he knew stuff. They would have to pick me up and toss me out to make me leave. At the time I really was that kung fu student that would endure any treatment in order to learn kung fu. Just like in the movies.


Luckily, as I described previously, I was taking Tai Chi somewhere else. People that truly wanted to teach and help others taught free classes. These people were not super Tai Chi people, but than neither was the Ba Gua group. Only Mike was the real Tai Chi guy. The master of these free lessons was just as good as Mike. For some reason, he taught free and truly helped people while Mike hid stuff, refused to teach, ignored the students he wanted to ignore.

It was quite a lot to accept from Mike after all of his talk about integrity, loyalty and family style.

I probably had more practice and learning from those free lessons than any of the Ba Gua people did in paid for Ba Gua classes. We had lessons on weekends and during the week. The free guy had about5 or 6 senior students as helpers. These people would walk around and actually try to help. They would talk to you. They would correct you. They would demonstrate for you. A really really nice group of people.

I learned the Yang form from these people. The man's name was Bill Chen. He deserves to be named for being an example of what Mike only talked about.


Bill Chen's style of Tai Chi was a soft style. Or at least that is what he taught for free. I never personally had anything to do with him so I cannot say if he was hiding stuff. At the time, I could not justify to myself being a Ba Gua student loyal to Mike, and also devoting the time to Mr Chen for his style. I had the opportunity to join private classes with Mr Chen's private group. At the time it seemed disloyal to the Ba Gua class.

Soft styles of Tai Chi are often derided. They are said to be for exercise. That they do not truly teach Tai Chi for fighting.

You know what? It hardly matters. The number of people I have seen over the years in kung fu classes that actually got into a fight is less than 5% of the total. Most people will get all the benefit they want out of an "exercise" style of Tai Chi.


What has happened is that there are many people lying about martial arts in the modern day. They are doing this because they want people to believe that kung fu is fake. That it was all movies. That is a political and sociological discussion that doesn't really belong here.


Soft style Tai Chi can be used to develop incredible strength. It can be used for fighting. The practitioner has to understand what is happening though.

Traditionally, a kung fu man would probably perform external martial arts for the first part of their career. Later on they would then change to internal martial arts such as Tai Chi. External martial arts are associated with hardness. Internal martial arts are associated with softness.

If you truly ponder this for a minute and think of the implications, you will see something very important. The top kung fu men only became soft AFTER they had spent years being hard. The importance of this cannot be overemphasized.

The process is like gardening. If you have ever worked in a garden, you know that growing plants grow everywhere. They go where they want to. A gardener will put a wooden trellis or support in the garden to train the plants. The soft plants will grow over the hard wooden trellis and stay in the desired shape.

This is what is happening in kung fu. The kung fu man makes himself a hard wooden trellis in the first part of his life. Then he changes to the soft growing plant in the later part of his life. Underneath, deep down inside of his body though, the hard wooden trellis part is still there. The developing soft part of his body grows over the hardness his body already possesses.


What has happened in the modern day is that people no longer do the hard work. A person will go to a soft Tai Chi style and they never become good fighters becuase they do not possess the underlying hard strength. People are no longer farmers or hard laborers. Most modern people are desk job workers. When these people take a soft style of Tai Chi, it does work, but not in the way it was intended to.


Which leads us to one of the things I learned from Mike. One day in class Mike says, "You have to be straight before you can be circular". It was one of the godly pronouncements that Mike liked to make. He didn't say anything else. Didn't explain any further. That one sentence and that was it.


Good thing I am smart. I figured out what he meant. In spite of the fact that he thought I was a loser he wanted to get rid of.

Class in general turned out funny that way. All the people Mike kept close to himself? I don't know if any of them really learned anything.

Me? The guy he wanted to get rid of? I actually figured out some of the reality about kung fu. And I did it based on about 10, sentence long comments like the one above.

Sounds like bragging doesn't it? In a way it is. And in a way it is defiance and pride. Mike made it clear he did not respect me. I probabaly paid him 4000 or 5000 dollars over those 3 years so I could tag along with the others and be ignored and looked down on.

In spite of that morally wrong treatment, I have taken what I figured out on my own and written some inexpensive books that attempt to teach people. Instead of paying 4000 or 5000 over 3 years for 10 sentences, a person can pay $20 for one of my 90 page books and learn more about kung fu than I ever did from Mike.

I will state up front that my books are difficult to understand. Not much more difficult than understanding a man from a foreign culture who provides information in crptic single sentences.

One of these days, if someone asks me, maybe I will write down exactly what it is that Mike meant by "You have to be straight before you can be circular"