My first xing yi quan practice was on May 29, 2002, coming up on seven years already. It was quite unexpected, really. I had begun tai ji quan classes with Mr. T back in Oct. 2001. Somewhere along the way I had read about xing yi quan somewhere and mentioned my interest after class one day. His response was positive, and not much longer afterward a couple of us went to a nearby park for an introduction to xing yi after our regular (indoor) tai ji quan class.

“A few minutes” turned into two hours and I was instantly hooked. We met intermittently through the summer, getting to know the 5 basic fists. It was a typical hot and sweaty summer in Tokyo and the mosquitoes were out in full force – but we barely noticed, having stepped foot into a new world. We started with 劈拳 piquan, and crossover interference from my karate was immediately apparent – I was slicing across and down diagonally (shuto uke). It took me ages to get the feeling of striking / pushing directly down the centerline. And it didn’t seem that I would ever be able to pull my reverse hand down in front of the dantian area below my navel – too many years of pulling to the side of the hip in Shotokan karate.

These outdoor park sessions blended into weekly sessions, 3 glorious hours on Monday mornings. They were sparsely attended – three was sometimes a crowd. All the better for we students, who moved past the five fists and into the twelve animals at last. But we worried about the teacher, spending so much time with us for so little money.

We occasionally slipped a bit of extra money into the payment envelope, or included train tickets to cover his transportation. It felt like the doors had been thrown open – an entire new art to explore, under expert guidance and in the best of conditions. But we also felt that we wanted to do something more for the teacher.

Somewhere along the way, an “official” xing yi class started in the hour before our Wednesday afternoon tai ji class, and it continues to this day. In fact, we just gave our first group xing yi quan exhibition in November, and a second in January.

Also along the way, those Monday mornings switched to Tuesdays and ba gua zhang became the focus – another unexpected but very welcome development. The ba gua got nefariously snuck in one Monday late in 2003, and has been a staple ever since.

Our teacher’s teacher, Liu Jing Ru Laoshi, has visited Japan every summer since 2006 for a special seminar, bringing us his xing yi and ba gua. In 2007, I made my first solo visit to Beijing to study with him.

Now these arts are at the core of my regular practice – something I never could have imagined before all this got started. I had no firm intention of starting either xing yi or ba gua – both arts seemed too far removed, something to get to someday in the future. But the future snuck up quite quickly.

(picture from Jindaiji Temple in Tokyo - curiously, the tiger and the dragon were the first two animal forms I learned)