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Power from harmony

Monday, August 16, 2010
Tony Hagen
STAFF WRITER
Some people learn to play a musical instrument at a very young age. Chen Peishan learned to do tai chi starting when he was just 3 years old.

His father was a "gentle" soul, Chen recalls, but a strict taskmaster, and on through his early years Chen was made to practice up to 10 times a day -- until his legs hurt. His father would teach technique and other qualities thought to be transferable only "through the heart," while his mother and aunt would stand over him and make sure he practiced correctly.

Those were the early days in China when life was a lot more simple. Chen's family didn't practice in a studio. They practiced in his father's house -- where there were many students coming and going -- and they practiced in the garden and along a nearby river bank. Starting at such an early age, and having the blessing of a very skillful master to teach him, Chen progressed rapidly.

By middle-school age Chen was teaching students in the family home when his father was away on business. When the Cultural Revolution swept down upon China, Chen's family was looked upon with suspicion, but he utilized the sense of "flow" he'd learned from tai chi and conformed to the political movement by pairing tai chi demonstrations with the revolutionary banner waving and singing that went with Chairman Mao's new government.

He survived and flourished, went on to establish a Chinese tai chi association and, one day, so impressed a visiting Japanese that he was invited to come and teach in Japan. It was a chance of a lifetime to spread his knowledge of tai chi far and wide. That was in 1988.

From just a handful of students, and an existence living hand to mouth in Tokyo, one of the most expensive cities, Chen added class after class, and eventually cofounded the International Society of Chen Taijiquan, a tai chi association.

Today, Chen is recognized worldwide as a highly accomplished master of the flowing martial art said to promote physical and mental well-being through its slow and subtle movements, which seemingly defy every notion of what a martial art should be.

This weekend Chen, 48, a 20th generation master, will appear in Princeton for a two-day workshop and a free demonstration of his Xiaojia Chen style of tai chi, the original form, he says, of this centuries-old practice once used with lethal effectiveness on battlefields in ancient China.

Chen is being hosted by one of his longtime students, Wonchull Park, a physicist who worked at Princeton University Plasma Physics Lab for 27 years and now teaches tai chi full time. Park is the founder of the Wuwei Tai Chi School of Princeton and has himself spawned many new tai chi teachers.

Even though the art itself is spreading, it is still relatively unknown and misunderstood, both Chen and Park say. Few have learned or fully understood its purest principle, which is that by cultivating peace and comfort in one's mind and action, a person can develop extreme power and timing for all kinds of engagement, both combat and in general, Chen and Park say.

Park says his physics background has helped him to develop a practical understanding of what makes tai chi tick. People oppose themselves, mentally and physically, to an extent that deeply impairs their effectiveness in many things they do, he says. Through tai chi practice you weaken and dissolve this opposition and gradually achieve a commensurate increase in physical strength and capability, and in mental awareness and response. Practicing at the highest levels of tai chi, a practitioner can physically repel an opponent with virtually no effort at all, Park says.

The famed "one-inch punch" used by actress Uma Thurman to break out of a coffin in the popular "Kill Bill Vol. 2" movie is not entirely fictional. In fact, it is a standard part of the tai chi arsenal.

"The promise of real tai chi is truly amazing," Park says. "It may seem too good to be true. Being truly comfortable physically and peaceful mentally leads to optimal action, be it in martial arts, health, or in everyday life actions. Optimal action, be it power, speed, or keen awareness, arises not from effort but from freeing oneself from one's own interference with one's action. Such powers thus enabled seemed mysterious, so ancients explained them through chi. As a physicist, I was able to explain scientifically these seemingly amazing things."

The Wuwei Tai Chi School's workshop with Master Chen Peishan will take place Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The free demonstration is Saturday from 10 to 11 a.m. and is open to the public. Admission is $100 for one day or $160 for two days ($100 total for high school or college students). The program will be at the Carl Fields Center, 58 Prospect Ave., Princeton Borough.

For more information, contact Wonchull Park at wpark@princeton.edu or call (609) 520-8423, or visit www.wuweitaichi.org.