Martial Arts Sojourner

In late 1964 I was entering 4th grade when the bullying began. As my parents were divorced I was left with no guiding male figure in my life, so my mother reached out to my 4th grade teacher, Mr. Voigt, asking him if he could teach me “self defense”. He couldn’t offer anything himself, but he did suggest she look into karate schools. It turned out that there was an American Kenpo Karate Dojo a few blocks from our house. She took me there and signed me up. In those days everyone trained together regardless of age. I was the youngest in a school of about 15 students. We ran the city streets barefoot in all seasons, did endless knuckle push-ups on the pebbled concrete floor and did pulled punch open fist full contact sparring with no pads or protection anywhere on the floors, walls, or our bodies.

I studied Kenpo for 10 years attaining my first black-belt at age 17ish. In college I began Shotokan style and Kendo ~ Japanese sword, along with Zazen meditation and Shiatsu Massage. My sensei was also my college music professor, James Uyeda, a master in music, teaching and the martial arts. He studied under Tanouye Rotaishi, founder and master instructor at Chozen – Ji, The International Zen Dojo in Hawaii near Honolulu. Sensei Uyeda changed my life, putting me on a path that helped me get past me past the foggy glass ceiling of martial arts in the United States.

At the Peter Britt Music Festival in 1978 I met the brother of the relatively famous New York martial artist/actor, Sensei Rory Calhoun. Sensei Calhoun’s brother suggested I look Rory up if I was moving back east to go to school … so I did. I was able to spend some time with Rory “the cyclone sensei” at The University of the Streets in what was then called “Hell’s Kitchen”, mid-town on the west side of Manhattan, a few blocks from Times Square.

At Yale, Inso Hwang, a resident Korean champion was teaching some classes on campus at the Payne-Whitney Gym and in his own school one town over in Hamden, Connecticut. I connected with him on several occasions as well. Aidido emerged in my experiences and a Master named Juba was teaching in New Haven. I worked for a couple of years with one of his advanced students, but continued my weekly treks to the Big Apple for parallel training in music and martial arts. He really enjoyed holding on to you a little too long to make sure you felt it. Pain is an excellent teacher. A highlight of those memorable days was a phone call I received from Curtis Sliwa inquiring about my possible interest in starting a chapter of the Guardian Angels in New Haven. I was tempted, having encountered the Guardian Angels on several occassions in NYC. I was very attracted to that life, but I declined choosing instead to focus on my advancing edcation and carreer in music.

Within a year it was 1982 and I found myself living in Hong Kong, working with the Hong Kong Philharmonic. Taichi was not hard to find but by then I was very interested in Nei Kung, the internal work of the Chinese Martial Arts and Traditional Chinese Medicine. My first lessons in Qigong and its related Fa Jing came as a surprise one day on the side of a mountain.

I had joined the Hong Kong Running Club, a group started in Hawaii in the 60’s that had migrated to different global locales over the years. Their goal was to train you to be able to run a marathon in one year, so I signed up. 5 miles, three times a week was their formula. I lived in Chi Fu Fa Yuen on the south side of the island with the southern face of Victoria Peak outside my rear, bathroom window. The view of the South China Sea from my 27th floor ocean facing front windows was never short of breath-taking. The famous floating restaurants of Wanchi in Aberdeen like “Jumbo” (capsized a few years ago) were easily seen, as was the occasional US Aircraft carrier that would come to port, anchoring between the islands of Hong Kong and Lan Tau to replenish their supplies and seek some R & R on the north shore in Kowloon Tong.

My running course was usually up the southerly back trails of Victoria Peak, around to the north face with a loop either up or down to connecting trails for the homeward half. My knees hated it, but I was committed.

During a routine circuit one day had I reached the point where I could look down to my left and see Hong Kong’s Central District unfolding beside me with each new step. I could see Dai Wai Tung, the City Hall building where I worked with the Orchestra and the expanse of Hong Kong Harbor with its hundreds, if not thousands of large barges, small family “junks”, ferries, ships, and the occasional sailboat. Enjoying the view and not focused on my running trail, I was suddenly and violently broadsided by what felt like a running man intentionally pushing me off the pathway. I managed not to fall … just, and upon turning I did not see an aggressive assailant, but instead a small, older man about 25 feet away on the other side of the trail. I hadn’t noticed him at all when I passed, lost in my reveries I suppose about the view. He was posed in what I now know as a Fire stance, smiling and laughing a little.

I walked over to him with a respectful not angry gate and, in my rudimentary cantonese, introduced myself as Bai Su-Ming, my chinese name, wondering if he had seen what had happened. In turn he gave me a polite response, “I am Lui Ping-Nan and that was “Fa Jing”.

When the student is ready, the teacher does appear.

I met him each week for the remaining 7 months of my time in Hong Kong. I received my first lessons in Qigong and breathing on the north face of Victoria Peak overlooking the city, rain or shine, on the Island of Hong Kong. We skipped one week due to a typhoon. A romantic beginning to my training in the Chinese Healing & Martial Arts.

Returning to Connecticut in 1983. I finished my studies at Yale and began performing music as a freelancer throughout the northeast and touring locally, nationally, and internationally. My attention shifted away from the practice of martial arts in favor of making money as a working musician. My studies turned to the books available from China and Japan that had been translated by reliable sources. The Tai Chi Classics, everything my Mantak Chia, T.T. Liang, Morihei Ueshiba and his sons, and many others. Western writers on philosophy, Alan Watts, Emanuel Kant, P.D. Ouspensky, Madame Helena Blavatsky, many Japanese authors, The Bible, The Koran, Idres Shaw on Sufism, and more. It all helped me to form my own ideas based on my life experience to date. I came to find that commonalities abound, but like ice cream, it may seem different from flavor to flavor, but it is really all the same and it all starts in the same place.

From 1985 on, I would practice techniques, teach some, attend seminars in New York and Boston and then in 2000 I found Modern Arnis. Being a drummer, I fell instantly in love with it. Why? Becuase you fight with two sticks! A marriage made in martial arts & music heaven. On September 11th, 2001 I returned to physical training in earnest, beginning American Kenpo again as a white belt and working back to black belt level over the next few years. Relearning the entire system from the basics on up with a mature and studied understanding of the true origins and foundations, and why I was actually doing it. I found Dillman Karate International (DKI) through an Arnis Seminar and immediately joined Professor Dillman’s ranks studying under him and a number of his high ranking students at many of his seminars and classes at the Butterfly & Bee Camp, Muhammed Ali’s former training camp in Deer Lake, PA.

In 2006 I returned to China with Professor Dillman and 55 great martial artists from half a dozen countries. We performed demonstrations all over China, were in newspapers, on TV, made a documentary, connected with the Japanese Karate Association from Kyoto, whose Leader and Head instructor along with a retinue of highly trained Karate-ka masters who travelled to China to meet with us and to re-discover the meaning of Kata. DKI became the first brother/sister school of the Shaolin Temple, and I received a higher ranking black belt promotion than I thought I would ever have, from George Dillman himself, at the Shaolin Temple.

The week we returned from China in 2006, I began my studies under Master Zhang Zhou-Xun, a Chinese National Champion. In 2019 he had a stroke and had to stop teaching. His wife Yu-lon passed during the pandemic and his son, Zhang Qi-Long, also a National Champion, moved to Connecticut to care for his father who did not want to return to China. I picked up my practice with Shifu Qi-Long as the pandemic wained and I am with him to this day. Taichi Chuan, Taichi Sword, Bagua Zhang, Hsing-I Chuan, Tuishou, Pou-tui, Tum-pai, Tui-na, Chi-na and Qigong are my daily fare of martial and healing arts.

Beginning this journey in 1964, in September of 2024 I will have been studying, teaching and training in the martial arts for 60 years.

Connecting my martial arts experience to Pickleball, I have created Pickleball Qigong. A warm up/healing regimen that helps people prepare for physical activity at any age, Pickleball Qigong helps practioners stop writing checks on the courts and in life that their bodies can not cash.

Learn more about Pickleball Qigong by following the link in the menu at the top of this page! Thanks for visiting! ~ PS