Interview with Ken Kiehn on Tai Chi
In this interview, Ken Kiehn discusses his martial arts background, what Tai Chi means, the benefits of practice, and advice for beginners.
Introduction
Ken:
Hi, my name is Ken Kiehn. I’m co-owner of Serendipity Healing Arts. I’m a lifelong meditator and martial artist, and I’ll be talking to you today about Tai Chi.
Martial Arts Background
Interviewer:
What is your martial arts background?
Ken:
I started martial arts when I was in elementary school. I went to a Catholic school, and the deacon at the school had a black belt in Shotokan. So I did Shotokan, and then judo, wrestling, boxing, and kickboxing.
I got into Kempo and earned my black belt in Kempo in my twenties. Then I went on and did Wing Chun. One time, at a Wing Chun school, I turned around and there was a Tai Chi practitioner who was 82 when I was about thirty-something. I was twice or three times as strong as him in ordinary physical strength, but I couldn’t do anything with him.
So I got into Tai Chi and continued with Tai Chi. I also learned Hsing-I, Bagua, some Eskrima, and I’ve spent a lot of time doing Serak Silat. That is primarily my martial arts background.
What Is Tai Chi?
Interviewer:
What is Tai Chi?
Ken:
Tai Chi is a martial art from China. It means “Great Ultimate Boxing.” It was brought out from Chen Village by Yang Luchan. He went around China defeating people without hurting them.
It is a martial art that focuses on yielding and overcoming. Even according to Yang Luchan, the greatest benefit is health. People who practice Tai Chi regularly often continue to move well and maintain physical ability into later life.
Health and Practice Benefits
Interviewer:
What are the health benefits of Tai Chi, or of a Tai Chi practice?
Ken:
First off, many students find they develop better balance. I’ve only fallen once in the last 25 years — and my kids tried to trip me a whole bunch of times.
Tai Chi can support balance, strength, energy, and resistance to stress because it is a great de-stressor. Because Tai Chi moves slowly, it can also help the different systems in the body work together more evenly. That is one way of looking at health: the body not being pulled too far up or down in one direction.
Skills Developed Through Tai Chi
Interviewer:
Can you give me some ideas of the skills Tai Chi develops?
Ken:
Tai Chi develops balance, which I talked about. It also develops yielding.
Yielding means — well, the Tai Chi classics put it this way, and one of my teachers put it this way: “My energy is my energy, and your energy is my energy.” Meaning that when you push on me, you don’t hit something rigid; you actually get drawn into something. When that is applied to human relations, it is very powerful.
Another skill you learn is how to relax your body deeply at any time. One of the things Tai Chi does is move from the lower part of the body while the upper part of the body remains relaxed. It teaches you how to drop energy through your body into the ground.
Frankly, go to a coffee shop and look around. Everybody is stressed while waiting in line for a latte. That is an example of what you do not want to do. You do not want to carry stress all the time.
Tai Chi is psychologically relaxing, and it is meditative when done slowly.
How Tai Chi Helped Ken Personally
Interviewer:
What are some of the ways that Tai Chi has helped you personally?
Ken:
Oh my gosh, there are a lot of them.
I had injuries from doing Kempo and kickboxing and things like that. Within the first six months or so of doing Tai Chi, those injuries felt much better for me.
In my early thirties, I would kneel down and hear my knees go crack, crack, crack from all the kicks with weights and all the silly stuff I did. That improved for me over time.
One of the things that was really important for me was the relaxation part of it and the body control. There is another skill called listening skill. I was able to feel inside my body in a way that I had never even imagined possible. I was also able to feel what was going on in another person’s body through touch.
That was helpful for a variety of things: working with my children, working with other people. Whenever I did too much, I found that going back to regular Tai Chi practice could help me rebuild my structure, rebuild my energy, and become calm once more.
Tai Chi for Beginners, Athletes, and Martial Artists
Interviewer:
As a beginning Tai Chi practitioner, how can Tai Chi benefit me? Let’s say I play a sport or do another martial art. How would Tai Chi fit in with other physical activities?
Ken:
That is a good question.
In China, where Tai Chi comes from, there was a saying that elite athletes practiced Tai Chi. Why? Because it builds health and restores the body.
Athletes have to do aggressive activities, and then they have to go through a restorative period to regain their strength. Tai Chi practice can support that restorative process.
It also makes you more sensitive to very small details in whatever you are doing — whether that is basketball, fencing, martial arts, or something else.
Tai Chi teaches you how to use your body in ways that bring online systems that, for most people, are not usually controllable. When I do Tai Chi, I am opening up all my joints and using my tendons. I am doing things that many people doing Western-style exercise usually do not know how to do.
When you add those things in, you can develop a different level of body awareness and ability.
Advice for Beginning Tai Chi Students
Interviewer:
As a beginner coming in, never having done Tai Chi before, what are a few words of wisdom from a veteran to a rookie Tai Chi practitioner?
Ken:
First off, do not give up.
At first, it is hard. It is hard to move slowly. It is hard to move in different ways. You keep going up into your head, and it can be frustrating.
Stick with it.
Somewhere between two and four months, your body on the inside can start feeling like liquid mercury. Cheng Man-ch’ing came from Taiwan and taught in the United States, in New York. He said Tai Chi makes you feel so good after you have been doing it for a while that you would not stop doing it even if they made it illegal.
It just feels great. Your body is going to feel great.
There can be a big payoff — a multifaceted payoff. It may help your relationships. It may help your mind. It can support your physical body. It may help your stress levels.
So it is a great thing to keep practicing. I would say somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes a day, and you will start feeling it pretty quickly.
Recommended Reading
Interviewer:
Are there any books or literature that a new practitioner can read to help further their Tai Chi practice?
Ken:
Yes, there is a lot of literature.
There are the Tai Chi classics. Those are the ones you want to look at. There are different translations, and some translations are better than others.
A basic one is T’ai Chi Ch’uan and Self-Defense by T. T. Liang.
Let me point something out, though: just because you move your arms around does not mean you are doing Tai Chi. Tai Chi is what the classics say it is. It is not just in the movement. It is what the movement is about, where it comes from, how it works, and how it connects to the body, the mind, and the energy. That is what Tai Chi is about.
Books can give you information, but a qualified teacher helps you understand the feelings and ways of using your body that are very much outside the usual Western paradigm of hit, move, run, and do push-ups.