About the Sensei
,
I've taught thousands of hours of Aikido and Tai Chi since 1980. The two arts, equal tributaries to my personal growth, were more remarkable in their common attributes than in their differences.
In January 1977, I began to study Tai Chi (and Hsing I) from Saul Krotki (an authorized student of Cheng Man Ching). I was grateful to find a teacher with such skill in short form, push hands, sword form and Tai Chi fencing. I had read about the great Cheng and these wondrous gifts of his but never dreamed that I would have such an opportunity to learn them in Salt Lake.
At the same time I began to study Aikido, which Master Fumio Toyoda told me was the same art as Tai Chi. Mr Toyoda showed me an Aikido technique that exactly shadowed a piece of Yang Cheng Fu's Tai Chi form (brush knee kokyu nage). I had suspected it for a long time, but Master Toyoda proved it to me--their DNA match.
In 1998, unable to keep the arts apart any longer, I started teaching a style of Tai Chi that I call "Aiki" in order to differentiate it from Folk Dance Improvisational Tai Chi, and to relate it to Aikido which shares the same basic, definitive, principles in different martial vocabulary.
Aiki refers to the interdependent, synergistic communion of energy, and Tai Chi is the undifferentiated cosmos, so the implication is that you may use this art to merge your personal energy with the energy of the universe.
Aikitaiji synthesizes many common, elementary concepts and understanding defined in classical, internal martial art, supplementing one art with insights from the other, validated experimentally.
The art that I teach is different from Tai Chi and Aikido as they are commonly recognized, but correspond literally with the basic principles that define both arts. I've done very little renovation, and much more complilation, leaving the parts that make up the art basically intact.
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">