Our Founder

I was never an active or athletic child. I was born with severe asthma and allergies which limited how much I could run around and play. I couldn't run more than a few dozen yards before I was wheezing and doubled over out of breath. If I played outside in the Spring or Fall I would regularly come down with hay fever and be miserable for weeks on end. Pets were entirely out of the question, even though I loved dogs and longed to have one.

I enlisted in the Navy when I was eighteen and they almost didn't take me - I made it in because it was the height of the cold war and I had super high test scores and they were recruiting for the Nuclear program. I thought I could find a career in the service where I could make a contribution to my country and to the world. I thought maybe the military would get me into shape. But when I left the Navy after four years, I wasn't any healthier and I kinda felt a little dumber than when I went in. But at least I had the G.I. Bill to go to college on - and that was where I met Tai Chi.

It all began when I tried meditation. Who knows why, but one day I had this notion that meditation would get my mind ready for the rigors of University. Push-ups for the brain and all that. The problem was I could not sit still for five minutes. My mind was a restless mess - these days I would be diagnosed with ADHD. But I happened to come across a chapter in a book about a Chinese martial art and "moving meditation" called Tai Chi. Coincidentally the college where I enrolled (San Francisco State University) offered Tai Chi. I would find out later that it was the most popular P.E. class on campus. I signed up for the class, and the rest (as they say) is history.

Well... not quite. I was still that skinny, unathletic asthmatic kid - just a little older and a little taller. I had grown disconnected from my own body. I remember that in my first class the teacher told us all to touch our toes, and I barely got my fingertips to my shins. Progress in Tai Chi was very slow for me, and for the next decade I was very bad at it. In fact, I had a classmate who took me aside one evening after class and said to me, "I hope you're only doing this as a hobby because you're never going to be any good at it." 

It's possible that he was just trying to motivate me with reverse psychology. If that was the case it worked, because after that I worked harder than anyone in my class. I would do double what everyone else did, because I was determined to prove that even skinny kids from small towns could master Tai Chi. And eventually I got better - good enough to go to some martial arts tournaments. I started to win, even beating out national champions in styles like Tae Kwon Do and Karate. Along the way, some other things changed as well. My asthma all but disappeared. I got muscles. I moved to Hawaii and started to surf (something I never imagined I could do). I rode a motorcycle. I fell in love.

In 1991 at the First World Wushu Championships in Beijing China, I became the first non-Asian and first American to place in the top three in international Tai Chi competition. Two years later I went back to China and won both a bronze and a silver medal at the world Tai Chi Invitational in Fuzhou. I was on top of the world.

But the next year, things began to fall apart. My kid brother had a seizure and went into a coma from which he never recovered. My girlfriend and I split up. I had to leave Hawaii and move back to the mainland to try and find a job. Worst of all, I stopped doing Tai Chi. Not all at once, but my practice went from several hours every day to only once or twice a week until finally I didn't do Tai Chi at all. Now I was no longer skinny, but I lost all my muscles. I was no longer young, either. My allergies all returned, even putting me in the hospital twice. I was lost, sad, single and depressed. 

And then one day, sitting in my back yard and reminiscing about my time in Hawaii, I started thinking about Tai Chi. I remembered how much I had loved it from the first day of my first class all those years past. I realized that quitting Tai Chi had left an enormous hole in my life. I wept, and I when I was done I stood up and began going through my old routine.

It was like I had never done Tai Chi before. My body had lost its magic. It's what I now teach my students is called "losing touch with your Qi." But somehow that didn't make me sad. In fact, I knew that this was just as it should be, because now I could rediscover Tai Chi like it was the first time all over again. But this time, instead of trying to master how it would look on the outside, I wanted dive deep into what Tai Chi feels like on the inside. 

On the road back to Tai Chi I learned that the health and vitality rewards it gives you are only the beginning. Through the experience of Tai Chi I learned how to be the person I always wanted to be - someone who could make a contribution to my country, my world and my fellow human beings. Teaching Tai Chi is my calling, something I actually knew 45 years ago by the end of my very first class experience. TaijiFit is my legacy, a way of making Tai Chi easy, approachable and meaningful for you. It's my small contribution to making the world a better place. 

And by the way... I now have a dog named Ginger.