Episode 590 - Shifu Chris Himmel
Shifu Chris Himmel is a Martial Arts practitioner and instructor at Great Bay Tai Chi and The Dojo.
Very often I would tell my beginners classes that Taichi is kind of the great equalizer because it doesn’t really matter what you have in your background, such as martial arts, yoga, or nothing, you’re all going to be terrible at this when we start out.
Shifu Chris Himmel - Episode 590
When you are searching what Martial Arts to train in for the first time, you may probably come across the more popular choice such as Taekwondo, Karate, Kungfu, or Jiujitsu and not really Tai Chi. Shifu Chris Himmel trained at Kempo at first as a young man however, Shifu Himmel switched to Taichi with his wife. Presently, Shifu Chris Himmel is teaching at Great Bay Tai Chi and The Dojo in the Boston area. Learn to know more about what captivated him in training with Tai Chi!
Show Notes
In this episode, we mentioned Dr. Jwing-Ming Yang.
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hello there! What's going on everybody? Welcome! This is whistlekick Martial Arts Radio. Episode 590 with my guest today, Chris Himmel. Hello, I am Jeremy Lesniak. I'm your host here for the show. The founder of whistlekick and a passionate, really passionate, I love traditional martial arts. And that's what we do. What we do over here at whistlekick, all the things we’re doing, go to whistlekick.com. Check it. Everything we've got going on. We've got links to our projects and our products. You're going to see stuff in our store whistlekick.com that you can purchase to support us. If you use the code PODCAT15 lets us know that you listen to the show and that we should keep putting money into the show and time and all the things that go into making this happen. The show itself has its own website whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. We released 2 brand new episodes each and every week with the goal of educating, entertaining, connecting traditional martial artists throughout the world. And I think we do a pretty good job with that. And if you think we do a pretty good job of that, well, maybe you'd be up for helping us out in some way whether that's telling people about the show. Sharing it on social media. You know going to the class or on zoom and saying “Hey, guys check out the whistlekick podcast. You know like they do some pretty cool stuff. The Jeremy guy, he might not have much hair but he really takes martial arts”. You can also sign up for our newsletter. You could, well, there's a ton of stuff but one that I want to highlight is our page on patreon.com/whistlekick. What do we do with patreons? It's a place that several times a month, we're uploading exclusive content, exclusive audio and video. We don't book traps there. We give you behind the scenes on who's coming up on the show. The only place you can find out the upcoming guests on the show. We don't tell you that stuff in the newsletter. We just tell you what we've done and you know, what we're going to do. Check out the patreon. In fact, at 2 Bucks a month, you're going to find out what's going on behind the scenes. We do a lot for a little and it's why, I very rarely do someone stop their patreon contribution. To those of you who do contribute to Patreon, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Your charity, I don't want to call it charity. Your support, that’s the better word, goes a long way to covering the expenses that go into doing all the things we do. We talk about all the different kinds of martial arts. If I was to ask you to make a list, you probably would before you start writing down words like Tai Chi or Bagua. And yet for some martial artists, that's the top of their list. That's the stuff that they do that they know most. And we don't get a lot of opportunity to talk to people who have ventured into these realms of other martial arts. Less common martial arts at least in western society. Especially when they started in something that we might think of as a more commonplace martial art. Well, Himmel is exactly that. And while we get a lot of his story, we spent much time talking about his transition into these other martial arts and some things that I think all of us can stand or remember in our training. I don't want to ruin anything or go any deeper. So, let's just let it unfold. Here we go. Hey, Chris. How are you?
Chris Himmel:
Hey, I'm good Jeremy. How are you?
Jeremy Lesniak:
I'm great, thank you. Your emails to me, you’ve been emailing me for a while. Conversing. I'm trying to remember when that started it all.
Chris Himmel:
I think I know when it started.
Jeremy Lesniak:
When did it start?
Chris Himmel:
It started right kind of at the outset of the pandemic.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay.
Chris Himmel:
Because you did an episode about how dojos we're going to survive the pandemic sort of thing. And I said hey, you got to check out she [00:04:00-00:04:01] dojo in Salisbury because as soon as the thing they were on the ball getting online material up and that sort of thing and sort of progress from there.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, they've been crushing and it's funny because you made that intro or that kind of recommendation and if somebody actually made me an introduction to [00:04:23-00:04:25] who is not on the show. Which we’ll make happen eventually. Yeah, but he's super busy. Yes, but I have had the chance to get acquainted with him and his school and all the great things that they're doing over there. And when I won it, I had a call with them and we were chatting about some stuff. And yeah, I said “I'm hearing great things about you” then he was like “really?”. I know I mention your name. He's like “that name’s familiar” but doesn't sound like he's aware of you which is a shame.
Chris Himmel:
Oh no, he knows who I am.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay. Then I somehow screwed up in saying it.
Chris Himmel:
Yeah, maybe. Because I've been teaching at a school for a number of years.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I definitely dropped the ball there. I definitely dropped the ball there on whatever I said. Or maybe… Because we're going back here. So, forgive my memory.
Chris Himmel:
It’s okay.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You know it might have been as I'm saying this. I think you were the only one that made that suggestion of that episode.
Chris Himmel:
Yeah, that would not surprise me.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's what it was. Okay. So, my apologies for seeming like a moron here.
Chris Himmel:
Oh, no. No. It’s okay because I talked to him at some point after it because I let him know. I said look I want you to know, I put your name in for this podcast because you know, I think you're doing such good things. I think they'd be interested to talk to you. He’s like “okay, cool” and then I followed up with him sometime later on like did you ever get in touch with this guy, did they ever reach out? He said you know funny enough. Someone else made that connection. You know I think it was Craig Wharem.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I don't generally bring up names. I try to let other people bring up the names but yeah, Craig connected us and it's been good. He is a great guy.
Chris Himmel:
It's like we've got enough overlapping circles just aren't...
Jeremy Lesniak:
We do and that's one of the fun things about martial arts. Those circles don't hit hard lines at state boundaries or anything. So, you've got a circle of… Even if it's 300 miles and then somebody 50 miles away has a circle 300 miles. You extend that across the United States and across the country. I’m sorry. Across the globe. Yeah, and you start to see that. You know it's rare that you're more than 2 or 3 degrees separated from any other martial artist.
Chris Himmel:
Right, right.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Which blows my mind.
Chris Himmel:
Yeah, it's a really interesting community that way. It doesn't take long to find those connections.
Jeremy Lesniak:
No, no. And that's one of the fun things about the show that will bring people on. We've had it a couple times. We had so many people on. You're going to be up so like 590 or something.
Chris Himmel:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
As we've had so many people who don't realize that their first degree connected to, we’re on. They say oh, so and so what I learned from the show. They were on the show's episode like 40 and they’re like wow. You know, the world just gets a little smaller and I think that's fun but I also think it's beneficial because it's harder to be a jerk.
Chris Himmel:
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
When you feel like you're connected to people, right? Like it's the YouTube effect. The worst comments in the world are on YouTube. I know it's not now. It seems like it's moved a little bit but for the longest time, you just see people being anonymous and just saying these terrible things. You know as a community when we realize that “hey, we've got more in common than we do that divides us”.
Chris Himmel:
Absolutely.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Well, it was likely.
Chris Himmel:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yes. So, what's going on with you? What do you want to do with teaching and training and all that stuff?
Chris Himmel:
So, I'm teaching. Well, I'll backtrack a little bit. Sort of at the outside of the pandemic. When we all sort of had to make adjustments. My schedule really went to teaching about 4 classes a week. And so, most of those were outdoors. Actually, all were outdoors when we started. you know and just trying to sort of keep something going for my students. Doing whatever we could and then as the weather started getting colder and outdoor training wasn't much of an option.
Jeremy Lesniak:
The challenges of New England.
Chris Himmel:
And in the summer, I put this thing out to my students and said, “I don't know how many classes you're interested in. I don't know who's going to hang in there in person or stuck on when indoors”. And so, I had a lot of back and forth and surveying the population trying to figure out what to do. And come November, I went from teaching 4 classes a week to teaching 17. And it just exploded.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Can you talk about the transition because that's some weird thing? Let's call it weird. That's weird.
Chris Himmel:
Yeah, it was weird. It's funny. Over the summer, I think because so many of people's other activities were shut down and they couldn't go participate in some of the things that they would have. Otherwise, many of my students really devoted themselves to Tai Chi because it was what they could keep doing and stay active and stay part of the community. And so, I had people that had been only taking one class a week before the pandemic suddenly we're taking all 4 of the classes I was offered. And it became clear that people were hungry for more. When we went indoors, of course, we had to limit the class size pretty severely. And so, I couldn't have that kind of numbers that I was getting when I was teaching in the arts. And so, I said alright. I'm going to have to offer several classes a week. So that everyone gets their chance and makes sure that we've got the numbers and everyone gets the class they want to get to. And so, it really just kind of exploded. And now, you know some of those people that went from one class to four classes. Now, I'm seeing them for 8 classes a week and people just continue to take a few classes. And I gave new students because like I said we were on shut down. People don't know how to deal, they need something. So, we really open the schedule up and we're getting a lot of people coming in multiple times a week and really digging into training. I started teaching 3 zoom classes a week. So, that the people who weren't able to come indoors still had an option to train. And people have really taken to it and been very dedicated. I'm really lucky that way.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What we're talking about, what your experience is pretty much what I predicted back in March of 2020. If you can stick around, if you can grind this out as other things fall away as unfortunately other schools don't do what they need to do, they're going to close. There's going to be fewer things for people of your martial arts choices. And those who want to stay involved or want to do something are going to find the options that are left. And that's exactly what you're talking about. From a bunch of 4 to 17. Right? And you're not alone. I mean you're from schools every week that are going through this and “wow, we're doing better than we were”.
Chris Himmel:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And it's really cool. Now, teaching in the park. What is it? Here's a hard left. What is it about Tai Chi in the park? Why is tai chi always the style that's taught in a park? I think if we imagine somebody teaching Tai Chi and most of us probably don't even imagine it being taught inside because there's a cliche of it being outdoors. Why is that?
Chris Himmel:
I think there's probably a couple reasons for it. I think that's very much the norm in China. There's a lot of tradition in China around people getting up and going to the park early in the morning for Tai Chi and for other activities. And there's also this culture in China of getting out of work and instead of going home and doing more work or sitting in front of the TV or whatever, people would go back out to the park and do whatever activity they're involved in. And so, I think it's not just Tai Chi. I think a lot of Chinese martial arts are taught in the park in China. And so, that tradition has managed to carry over somewhat. I also think tai chi is still kind of a funny little niche market and there are people who are interested in Tai Chi that don't want to be in a martial arts dojo that don't want to feel that kind of environment for whatever reason. You know much like my own practice now, I rent a studio at an hourly rate. And so, I don't have a dedicated space just for Tai Chi at the dojo in Salisbury. I'm renting another studio space where I teach. I've taught in yoga studios and I taught other places. I think outdoors just kind of lends itself to the overheads really low. And we can get a fair number of students out there and it's just nice to be able to practice that outside doing a lot of the kind of sparring and contact work that happens inside sort of a traditional martial arts dojo. And you're not worried about haven't mats and throwing people down. Tai Chi sort of lends itself that way.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Wow. Yeah, it's funny that we all have that kind of, maybe, I'm putting words in other people's mouths but whenever I see Tai Chi in a movie. It's always outside in a park but you said something in order to explore the Tai Chi, I [00:14:09-00:14:10] a niche. People call different things. I don't know that there's actually a pronunciation. So, anybody listening is getting their hackles up over one pronunciation of the other. Just let it go, right? Is it really or is it that it is our perception here in the west? My understanding is that globally it's got quite a bit of participation.
Chris Himmel:
I think you're right. I think it does have quite a bit of participation throughout the globe and it's not like it's such a small leisure or niche here but it does sort of resist some categorization. And also fall into multiple categories. And so, you get kind of a funny cross section of people in Tai Chi, you get the people that are interested in the Marshall Tai Chi and really want to kind of explore how it works in a combat or self-defense type system. And you get people that are really only interested in the health side of things and might come from more of a yoga approach and be interested in it that way. And so, you get kind of a… It's a funny art to work in that way. I think more people would really enjoy it if they would try it but I do think there's still a little bit of culture around seeing it as something kind of on the range. It went through a phase of being sort of very like a new age practice. And so, a lot of people kind of forget that. But I think it's mostly around kind of a lack of understanding and knowledge about what art really is. And what the real benefits are. And I think because it sort of covers a wide umbrella of benefits and what it offers. If you only see one side of that and you're not interested in that then you sort of push the whole thing. But this other aspect would actually be really good for me.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Now, we're talking about the difference in perception versus reality. There's some truth to that the general perception of what Tai Chi is versus what it really is. I've been fortunate enough to have a little bit of experience with some amazing high level. [00:16:2-00:16-24] Marshall tai chi practitioners. And so, I think I've got a pretty good understanding of what it is or at least can be. But I would imagine that many of your students at some point had to have a transitional mental shift from what they thought it was as they become students. Is that happening before they reach out to you with inquiries or during your initial conversations or does that not happen until they actually start training?
Chris Himmel:
I think all 3 of those. It really depends. As great Tai Chi, we sort of separate out our short form in our long form programs. We call our short form program Tai Chi for good health and it's really marketed for those people who are really interested in the health side of things and don't want to get too deep into the martial arts. And then our long form program includes all of the Marshall practices. Right. So, we get to the questions and we practice applications and that sort of thing. Tai Chi with health is always the bigger program, right? That's why more people come to Tai Chi because that's what sort of introduces them to it but you know we were talking before about what happened over the summer. There were people that we're taking one class or suddenly taking or we're certainly taking 8. Right? Well, it was a lot of those people that came to short forms of Tai Chi for good health. And developed an interest during those classes then “okay. I know what this is now. I want to go deeper” and that's the way we always explain it. You know the long form; the marshal program is a deeper level study into the art. And so, people that were taking just the short form suddenly we're taking short form and long form and getting a better understanding of what it was all about.
Interesting.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So, I think in a lot of ways, it's become kind of this back door entry into martial arts. Where people that you would never expect to take a Kung Fu class or Karate class, they started this good health Tai Chi program and suddenly find themselves doing much more martial practice. It's really interesting to see that develop.
It makes a lot of sense. The people who end up starting with short form going long form are they less interested in short form after they've spent more time in that more Marshall program?
Chris Himmel:
I think sometimes. I think it's very common that the evolution will start with them being really interested in the short form. Trying a long form, getting a better understanding and sort of letting their short form fall off a little bit. Well, they really dig deep into the long form. And then often sort of come back to reemphasizing the short form. Just as an additional practice is something that... We call them short form and long form because the short form takes much less time. Start to finish, it's only 5 minutes to do the whole thing whereas if you're doing long form, you're talking more about 20 to 30 minutes maybe. And so, short form is a great thing to have. In your repertoire, where I've got 5 minutes, I'm really stressed out. I need to find a way to relax. I'm going to take those 5 minutes to do my short form rather than think about okay, I'm going to go all the way into the long form. And for me it's a difference in mentality, right. When I'm doing the short form, it's much more of a kind of a meditation feel to it. And one of the long forms, it's much more often a martial feel.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That makes sense. Yeah. How did Tai Chi start for you? Was that your first start or some else or you shifted? What's the story? What’s the history?
Chris Himmel:
So, when I was young, my first art was Kenpo. So, this was when I think I started right around when I was 12 maybe. Yeah like 12. Maybe 11. And I did that kind of throw out by junior high and high school years and I loved it. I did it. I was very serious about it for a long time and then when I went to college, it kind of fell off for me. I had originally ambitioned of finding a place to train while I was in college but the college lifestyle and schedule sort of didn't allow for that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You're not alone and so many others.
Chris Himmel:
That was when that kind of dropped off for me but it was still always kind of a part of my mentality and I had you know dreams of keeping it up in some fashion. And then you know got out of school, got a job. Started all of that and was always sort of aware and interested in Tai Chi sort of in the background. Somewhere didn't have a whole lot of depth of knowledge about the Marshall side of it but I kind of knew there was something there that was interesting. And so right around 2007, my wife and I decided that we were interested in finding an activity that we could do together. I'm a musician by the other side of my professional life. And so, I was always heavily invested in music. She was already heavily invested in dance and those are kind of our separate things. We said we could really use something to do together and we ended up deciding that Tai Chi was the thing to do. We checked out a bunch of studios and I had enough knowledge and background to know what I didn't want. I didn't want that just the shallow level. New age kind of feel. I wanted something with a little more of the martial tradition and so we were able to be picky about where we ended up. And found a great place right in the town that we lived in. We were very lucky and started doing that together. Once we got going that was kind of it for me. I was locked right away and have stayed with it ever since. She stopped after she was pregnant and hasn't had the chance to go back yet but does sometimes say she's interested in restarting at some point. But that's how it started, that's how.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What hooked you as a former however we want to delineate styles here. You know, we can talk external, internal, hard, soft, whatever. To me the lines are pretty blurry.
Chris Himmel:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
But I think we can agree Tai Chi is typically quite different from the way Kenpo is.
Chris Himmel:
Absolutely, yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So, if we at least acknowledge the differences, if Kenpo was something new, you're really into and passionate about it for a while. The discrepancy between the 2 clearly there was something about what was different that also spoke to you. So, what was that?
Chris Himmel:
I think it was kind of the whole package for me. I knew when I was getting ready to go back to training and was kind of looking at Tai Chi. I knew I didn't want to do Kenpo again. I felt like I had kind of got what I really needed from Kenpo. I certainly could have gone back in and gone further. That's not to say, a very high-level Kenpo practitioner. I'm not by any means but I sort of felt like that was the right thing for me at that time of my life. And now when I had finished school and was kind of moving into a different phase of life, I knew I needed something different. I just kind of did some research and said we're going to check this Tai Chi thing out and see what it really is. So, the fact that the teacher we found was able to address the Marshall side of the practice which appealed to Kenpo is to me. And also had the softer meditation style. It really brought it all together. So, I think it is for me. It was a whole experience that really drew me into it.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And the question that I generally ask folks who cross train or make a big shift, how did your Kenpo background positively and negatively impact your transition into Tai Chi?
Chris Himmel:
So, for the positive side, Kenpo definitely gave me a better understanding of what was going on inside the movements you know the way Tai Chi is trained, or any internal quote-unquote, “style”, is trained, really starts from movement first, and doesn't move into technique and that sort of thing and so later. So, those movements feel really abstract when you're learning them. But having the Kenpo in my background and sort of having a fundamental understanding of how that might relate to working with another person, gave me more insight into how those postures were going to function. And so, I just had a little more context or, what the movements of the form were trying to teach me. But on the other side, as you referred to already, Kenpo is decidedly on the external or hard style side, and letting go of a lot of that is really hard when you make the transition to a softer style. When you build up all that power training and you get pretty good at using your muscles and being forceful with stuff, Tai Chi takes a very, very different approach. And so just getting over that, and kind of releasing all that stored up tension takes a while. It did for me, anyway. It took a while for me to get over.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And so, what about now? As you’re practicing Tai Chi, teaching Tai Chi, do your Kenpo roots show up from time to time?
Chris Himmel:
Yeah. And so, it's interesting we talked about Shihan Kendall’s Dojo where I teach several of my classes and that's a Kenpo school. And so, those teachers and those students and my own kids attend that school. And so, I'm familiar with at least the fundamentals of what goes on and the first several techniques that are taught. We even did some seminars with Shihan Kendall’s group where we would take Kenpo techniques and sort of Tai Chi [00:27:12-00:27:13], soften them up and see what's another way to approach this technique and how would Tai Chi deal with this problem in comparison to how Kenpo would deal with this problem. And, I really enjoy that crossover of, let's see how Kenpo would play this game, let's see how Tai Chi would play this game. Because sometimes, you're working with a person who's got a particular technique that just doesn't work for them. The body type isn't right or, they haven't developed some aspect that would be really helpful and you take a different approach and suddenly they can find a way to make that technique work. And I think having that contrast of Tai Chi and Kenpo working together is really powerful for a lot of people and so I really like it when we can do those crossover type activities.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Nice. I really enjoy that crossover, that cross training, that relating one style back to another. I think there's something not only really fun about it, but I think there's something, “enlightening” seems a little bit too blunt of a word but, I'm sure you've experienced it personally and probably also as an instructor where, looking at a concept in a slightly different way or, maybe in this case a more dramatic way, can really open it up or, someone may have to wrap their minds, “Oh, that's what it means! That's what we're trying to do with this!” or, “That's how I'm supposed to move here”, and I think that can be really fun.
Chris Himmel:
Oh yeah. Absolutely I agree.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay. So, talk about your own, I guess, personal practice through this. If you're teaching this many classes, you're probably, I'm going to guess, shifting some of what you're teaching into what you want to work on at least part of the time, so you can get your own practice in. But are you ever exploring the- what's the least except the dichotomy here for, even though I don't think either of us agree with it, just for the purposes of the discussion? It’s a little bit easier to explain when nuance isn’t available. Are you practicing things that are non-Tai Chi? There we go, I think we did it without…
Chris Himmel:
Yes. So, I think there's a few pieces to that question. And so, one is, the advantage now of having so many students that have really invested themselves in coming to several classes a week and I'm seeing 3 or 4 times throughout the course of a week, means we've been able to raise our level pretty significantly over the past several months, and so we've been able to really dive into some interesting concepts within the forum, and those little nuances in the transitions that we kind of never really had the chance to when people were only attending class once, maybe twice a week. You just don't get enough time in to really explore the depths of what the practice has to offer. And so, the fact that we've got more students now who are investing so much time and can do that, has been really great for me as an instructor, and the students are able to ask more interesting questions now, and we can have better conversations around a lot of that. And so, my personal practice on that side of it really relates to that, and it's helping make me a better teacher and giving me better ideas and better ways to explain a lot of the concepts that we explore in the scope of a class. So, the other piece to your question about I'm not practicing things that aren't Tai Chi, there are 2 other arts that I teach and practice now. They're a little more esoteric in some ways than Tai Chi. One is called Xing Yi, and the other is called Bagua, and they're all in that kind of soft-internal style of Chinese martial arts. So, they're all related in some way, but they're all practiced really differently. And the Xing Yi in particular, is a lot of fun for me to play with because I think of it as being about half way between Tai Chi and Kenpo. Definitely has a harder look to it, even though it uses a lot of the Tai Chi body mechanics. And the Bagua is another kind of really interesting practice. Its hallmark is being practiced in a circle, all the forms so to speak are done in a circle. And so those are really the focus of my non-Tai Chi practice even though they're still kind of tied into that, because they come from that same soft style Chinese root.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, interesting. Let’s start here. If someone is familiar with Tai Chi at least in concept, and I'm going to suspect that most of the folks listening are. Why are you going to do one of these other 2 or, all 3? What is one provide to you that Tai Chi does not?
Chris Himmel:
I think they’re different approaches. Again, sort of like what we talked about with Tai Chi and Kenpo, right? Kenpo will solve this problem this way, Tai Chi will solve this problem this other way. Bagua and Xing Yi are kind of other ways to explore that. So, we think about we've got the Tai Chi diagram, that classic Yin-Yang symbol with the white and the black swirl. And so, when we talk about Chinese philosophy and anything like that, people will use that symbol as a way to sort of help them define those things, right? So, if you take soft style martial arts and impose that under the symbol. Tai Chi is the Yin side, the black swirl, right? The soft side. Xing Yi is the harder side of that. Still under the umbrella of soft style or internal arts, but it's definitely harder than Tai Chi is. And Bagua kind of becomes the line in between. So again, you can take those same problems that you might talk about as Kenpo will solve this way, Tai Chi will solve this way, and Bagua and Xing Yi have different answers to how they work. And so, it just- it adds to everything. And eventually by my Bagua has become infused in into my Tai Chi, and my Tai Chi is infused into my Xing Yi. It becomes a really interesting exploration that way.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Would it be fair to compare the 3 in the way that someone might compare 3 different styles of Karate say like, Uechi-Ryu, and Goju, and Shotokan?
Chris Himmel
I think, I don't have enough experience within those styles to-
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay
Chris Himmel:
…really define them that way, but my understanding is there'll be a lot of curriculum overlap in the kind of styles you just mentioned. Sometimes you'll see the same form even if it's in a slightly different interpretation, whereas between Tai Chi, Bagua and Xing Yi, that's not really the case. You know that Tai Chi form is a Tai Chi form, and Xing Yi is much less focused on form. It's a lot of line drills and has a lot more sort of technique at the front of the curriculum. And Bagua, we sort of talked about has this funny-circle-walking practice. So, they all give you kind of this different aspect. I would say, when you talk about Karate style, sometimes you'll hear people talk about “Well, this one really emphasizes about that technical martial side, and this one really emphasizes the low side”, something like that. And so, you could make that comparison, especially with Xing Yi and Tai Chi. The Xing Yi is sort of very straight forward, very martial, works a little bit earlier on power training, whereas Tai Chi would be more of sort of the soft glowing side and waits on its power training until much later.
Jeremy Lesniak:
All right. Now, what I was bringing up this dichotomy, this hard-soft you chuckled because I'm sure you've heard this before, and I think even in some of the notes that you sent over. This was something that you wanted to get into this idea that it's not as black and white, cut and dry as so many practitioners, and honestly it tends to be the quote-unquote, “hard style” practitioners who draw that line in between. How did we get there? What is- why it- Well, first off, if I'm speaking accurately.
Chris Himmel:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Why is the perception of these, 3 styles you're talking about, why is their perception that they are soft and exclusively soft or internal from a large portion of the martial arts world?
Chris Himmel:
I think there's a couple reasons for that. I think in China at some point, and I won't know exactly when so I can't pin down a timeframe on this. But there was kind of a movement from the Chinese government to classify Chinese martial arts into those categories and say, “This is hard style, and this is soft style”, and sometimes you'll hear people use the term, “Shaolin” as in the Shaolin Temple, and they'll talk about “Wudang” as in the Wudang Mountains, and the hard style arts became associated with Shaolin and Buddhism, and the quote-unquote “soft style arts” became associated with Wudang and Daoism. Whether or not those delineations were truly accurate, people sort of took them and ran. I think we get a lot of ways. The hard styles became harder, and the soft styles became softer. The other piece, and I have kind of this working theory about this that I kind of stole from Dr. Yang who was on your show not that long ago.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Chris Himmel:
In one of his lectures, he talks about how the curriculum between a soft style art and a hard style art, are really just backwards from each other. They work in opposite directions, where a hard style art will start off with technique and power training, and then at the end of the curriculum, they do body mechanics. And in a soft style art, it's the reverse. We start off with our body mechanics and then do the power training and the technical stuff a little bit later. And so, I think what happened was in both styles, whether you talked about a Chinese style or Japanese style, you had people that maybe came from this country and went to China, went to Japan, trained, and came back and brought some of these arts with them. I think oftentimes what happened was, you would get people who would train in a hard style art and reach a certain level, but maybe never got the body mechanics side of it, and got all that power training and all that technique and brought it back. Whether or not, they knew they didn't quite have the complete art or not started teaching it, and that became the complete art. And then, the same thing happens with the soft style stuff and I think especially with Tai Chi, which is why now you sort of see less martial Tai Chi out there,
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Chris Himmel:
…because you get these people that did all this great body mechanic work, but never really got the martial side of it. So, when they came back, that's what they had to teach. I think there was loss on both sides, but I think it's most obvious on the Tai Chi side where, you had people that just never got this martial side to it, and maybe they didn't even know that it was supposed to be there, because it's at the end of the curriculum.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right. When you talk about the martial side of Tai Chi, we may have some folks listening who have no idea what we're talking about. So, could you explain that to them?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Through the method we were just talking about, Tai Chi really became known as a health practice, right? Where, people came from these other countries are trained under someone and got this beautiful health art, but never were taught or didn't understand that Tai Chi was originally conceived as a martial art. Depending on who you ask, you'll get different stories about what the actual the origin of the thing is but, the best that we've been able to trace it, it goes back to the Chen family village in China and originally it was just called Chen's style boxing. It was the Chen family's martial art. Then eventually, there was this guy named, Yang Luchan, who studied with the Chens. When he went to Beijing, he became well known as a martial artist and eventually that became “Tai Chi”. So, the full name for Tai Chi is, Tai Chi Chuan. “Chuan” is fist, and indicates that it's a martial art. But then, as we were talking about you had these people that were trained and didn't get the martial side of it and Tai Chi, got distilled down into a practice known for its health benefits. It's because of all those body mechanics that Tai Chi works on at the outset. It focuses much more on alignment and coordination rather than martial technique. So, that's what a lot of people got but, Tai Chi was originally conceived and intended to be a martial style. That's what it was designed for.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's interesting that the loss of, or the removal absence- yeah, “absence” is the best word. The absence of that martial aspect seems to correlate with the absence of that third piece of the name, the “fist”.
Chris Himmel:
Right.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's almost like, “Okay, we're just going to hack off this part of the name. We're going to hack off this part of the curriculum”, and just kind of run with it.
Chris Himmel:
And I think that may be Intentional. Some people may realize that they're only teaching a health-based art and not teaching the martial side and say, “Well, we're not really teaching Tai Chi Chuan. We’re teaching, ‘Tai Chi’.”
Jeremy Lesniak:
I've shared this story, once or twice on the show but it's been a while so, I’ll share it again because we have new listeners all the time. My most significant Tai Chi experience with someone who understood the complete art or, from my perspective the “complete art”, someone who had the martial aspect, came to a Taekwondo class and it was someone that I knew... we had a lot of people that we knew in common, and he knew that I had trained a bunch of stuff, was here at this Taekwondo school. So, I became his dummy for the class, for this hour-long session that he put on, and most of the people there were kind of into it. A few people were like, “Eh”, and I was loving it because, I have never been beat up so completely and so gently in an overwhelming way. If you've never experienced it, it is really hard to describe.
Chris Himmel:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I would punch at this man who, he had a few inches on me but, I'm quite sure I outweighed him. I'm not a large guy. He was thin, and I would punch him as we got up to pretty darn close to his heart as I could, and he would just kind of go… just these very subtle movements that I did not even feel.
Chris Himmel:
Right.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And I was gone. I was on the floor, and the only contact I felt was, with the floor.
Chris Himmel:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And there were some things I had him. I said, “Can you do that again, please?” I'm trying to figure out what's going on because, it was just so “subtle”. It's the best word I can use. Can you unpack any of that from what I'm describing, for not just listeners but, for me?
Chris Himmel:
Yeah. I think you're right. It's very, very hard to describe it if you don't have that kind of experience and get a feel for what that's like. But when you're working with a high-level Tai Chi person, because we practice those very, very refined body mechanics, and there's this saying in Tai Chi about “4 ounces deflect 10,000 pounds”. You’re finding this alignment inside your body where it doesn't require muscular force to upset someone's balance or divert that strike that you're throwing at them, and then they use body positioning to take you further off of your route and really upset your balance and have you on the floor or tied up in some joint locks, and it's very hard to feel what's happening. And a lot of that is done through this practice in Tai Chi that we call “push hands” where, usually when people think of Tai Chi, they think about the slow-moving form out in the park. But Tai Chi also has these partner exercises, and “push hands” is part of that where they're still done slowly and they're done with very light contact, and we really work on feeling how and where someone is moving at that really subtle level that you are trying to describe. And so, it comes from as soon as you make contact with the person, you feel where they're going, you feel where the next strike is going to be from, and you just use your body position and really gently kind of push that off the line and upset their balance and suddenly that person is feeling exactly what you experienced that sort of overwhelmed, “I'm on the ground, I don't know how I got here.” It’s a really interesting experience to have the first time you have it, there's nothing quite like it. And my teacher- I got to be the demonstration dummy for many of those classes and so I'm very familiar with that feeling.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I've never had more fun getting beat up.
Chris Himmel:
Yeah. It's interesting how that works because you don't actually end up hurt-
Jeremy Lesniak:
No, not even a little.
Chris Himmel:
Right. But, suddenly you're just not at all where you expected to be.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It’s some definitely some dissonance between the expectation and the result, and I find it fascinating. How long does that sort of competency in Tai Chi take? Is that like black belt equivalent in, say, a Kenpo, or Karate, or Taekwondo?
Chris Himmel:
The rankings thing is really hard for me. We don't give rank in our school. There are circles that do offer rank in Tai Chi. My teacher, Paul Mahoney, he really kind of rejected that and I don't offer rank for any of my students. Because of the way the curriculum is so circular, it a kind of doesn't fit well into that kind of categorization. But I think, it takes a while it depending on the person and how much time they train, and what their experience is. We talked about how I came from Kenpo, I came from a hard style art and so it took me a long time to let go of a lot of that stuff and really learn to listen and feel about subtle level. Some people find it easier. Women tend to find it a little easier, because they're not quite so ingrained all the time and that forcefulness that a lot of us men are. So, yeah. It does. It takes a while and it's so different from any other practice that I've been exposed to that it, it's just it's a matter of how much time you're willing to spend really practicing and the Chinese have this saying about, “Invest in loss”, and be prepared to be bad at it for a long time before you can start to figure it out.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's been a recurring theme on quite a few episodes of the show over the last few months.
Chris Himmel:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
This idea that so many of us today aren't willing to step in and just plain ‘ol suck at something for a while so we can get past that part to the part where we're kind of not sucky.
Chris Himmel:
Right. And I think that's part of that is a cultural thing. I think our culture is very much interested in things I can do well very quickly. Very often I'll tell my beginners classes that “Tai Chi is kind of the great equalizer”. It doesn't really matter what you have in your background if it's other martial arts, if it’s Yoga, if it's nothing, you're all going to be terrible at this when we start out. They learn very quickly, that's true. But, given a little bit of time and some effort and some thoughtful practice, it gets better and you start to find the benefits in that practice.
Jeremy Lesniak:
In the classes you're teaching, are they exclusively Tai Chi or, do you have- are you bringing in Bagua-Xing Yi into the same classes? Do you teach those as separate classes like- how does that all reconcile?
Chris Himmel:
Right now, I teach the Bagua and the Xing Yi separately. I have, my primary classes are the Tai Chi short form, the Tai Chi long form, and now twice a week I'm offering what we call, Wudang Kung Fu which is really where we're teaching the Bagua and the Xing Yi. The Wudang Kung Fu, Tai Chi also kind of falls under that umbrella and so eventually once the students have a little bit more grounding in the Bagua and the Xing Yu, the Tai Chi will be a little more tied into that. I'm also kind of looking forward to as we get more people vaccinated and were able to start doing some contact work again that sort of thing as we delve a little more into application work which is kind of fallen behind us during the pandemic. I think as we explore the applications, there'll be a lot more crossover between the Tai Chi, and the Bagua, and the Xing Yi, that way people can kind of get a feel for like we're talking about how those different arts solve those different problems.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sure. That makes sense. So, what else? We’ve talked about a bunch of different stuff but, I feel like I've kind of had you on the spot quite a bit on what you practice more than you. But I also get the sense that you're not a big fan talking about “you”. Maybe that was a good decision.
Chris Himmel:
Yeah, probably.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay. Here's a question I don't ask often anymore. This is a little bit of a throwback personal challenges. When we go through life with martial arts, we have a tool kit that we can refer to. Is there any personal experience you're willing to share that might have gone a different way, had you not been a martial artist?
Chris Himmel:
Yeah. I would- the biggest one that comes to my mind we talked a little bit about when I started Tai Chi, it was with my wife, because we wanted something that we can do together. And so, when we finally really got into it, it was about 2008. I mentioned that she stopped training when she got pregnant, and the big driving force behind that was because she was pregnant with triplets.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Woah.
Chris Himmel:
Yeah. So, that of course has its own challenges to it. I feel really fortunate that we found Tai Chi at that time, because that really kind of became my anchor through a lot of the stuff we went through. And so even once the 3 kids were born, my wife and I said to each other that our schedule at home is going to be really crazy. We both are going to need something to hang on to that's going to get us out of the house and give us some personal time and something to practice and that sort of thing. So, for her, that was her dance class and that she was able to go to and we sort of treated that as sacred and said, “We’re not going to mess with that. That's your time, you get to go do that.” And for me, it was Tai Chi. So, I just, continued my training and let the Tai Chi be my anchor, and my extra community once the kids were born, it really helps to sustain me through all the stuff that came into having a wife who was pregnant with triplets and then gave birth to triplets and having 3 infants in the house at once, all of that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's a lot!
Chris Himmel:
That’s a lot.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That’s a lot. I wonder how many people would choose to get pregnant if they said, “You're going to get pregnant, but you're going to have 3.” I feel like that number would go down at least a little bit.
Chris Himmel:
Yes, they're smart.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, I love it. Talk more about what you've got going on how if people want to reach you, resources that you're providing. I got the sense that as things went online you may, not only was Shihan Kendall embracing it, but I got the sense that you also were so- are there ways that people from afar might connect with you?
Chris Himmel:
Yes. So, I'm teaching Zoom classes a week. 2 of them are in the Tai Chi short form, and one of them is in the long form, so we try to give enough variety there for the people that are interested in that. And then, I also teach a Tai Chi for beginners’ course several times a year, and we made the decision to make that available in video format, and so there's a site called Teachable where, you can sign up and take these various courses. And so if people are interested, they could go to greatbaytaichi.teachable.com, and they'll find a way to access a video course there that takes them through my typical 8-week Tai Chi for beginners’ course and starts off as you've got no Tai Chi, no martial arts, no experience at all, and takes them through the first part of the Yang-style short form, so that they get a good fundamental understanding of what Tai Chi is and what the beginning of the form is like and how it moves and that sort of thing, so we have that available. I also have a Patreon site which is patreon.com/greatbaytaichi, and that's another's space where I put up some instructional videos, and I sort of write little articles and blog type entries there, book reviews to give people another resource and way to practice at distance.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Cool, I love it. And folks if you're listening, we've got these links. We’re going to make sure that those are on the show notes at whistlekickmartialartsradio.com just in case you skip the intro and outro, and you don't know that I say these things. I'm throwing them here in the conversation. Is there anything that we didn't get to that you wanted to get to anything that you wanted to unpack?
Chris Himmel:
No. I don't think so. I think we had a good conversation around…
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, I agree.
Chris Himmel:
…where Tai Chi falls kind of in that broader spectrum of martial arts and I think it's a really valuable thing for people that are in a harder style or external type art to give you another approach, and I think the reverse is also true. People that are just on the Tai Chi for good health side and only explored it as a health practice, getting some martial arts experience whether or not, it's strictly fits that category of Tai Chi just deepens your level of understanding of what those arts are.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I completely agree. I've said for a long time that if you take a look at what you're good at, you can also kind of turn around and see the things you are not so good at. And by addressing those things, you have the most overall improvement for a lot of us quote-unquote, “hard stylists”, adding some Tai Chi, some Bagua, some Xing Yi into our practice even temporarily, might make some light bulbs go off.
Chris Himmel:
Yeah, absolutely.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right. Well, I appreciate you being here, and you know how this next part goes: what are your final words to the folks listening?
Chris Himmel:
I think my final words would be exactly what we just said. If you're in a hard style art and if you're reaching one of those training plateaus, getting a different perspective is really to your benefit. I definitely encourage people when you're getting those upper levels of those arts, start exploring something different, something softer to be a compliment to what you're already doing and I think the Tai Chi people, it goes the same way. We need to be willing to explore the martial side of the practice so that we understand why Tai Chi moves the way it does, it just makes everybody better overall because we're all on that same journey somewhere.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I thought that was a great conversation. I always come away from my conversations with people who engage in martial arts that I've not spent much time doing, wanting to spend more time training in those arts. Shifu Himmel and I’ve kept talking and, what would happen in the near future, so I’m kind of pumped about that. Thanks for coming to the show, Sir. Thanks for stepping up and we’ll keep talking, looking for to those of you listening. Hey! Thanks for listening, thanks for supporting us, thanks for checking out the show, and I hope that you get a lot of value out of what we do. And if you do, you know what to do, I said it in the intro. But I'll hit the highlights again. Buy some Patreon, tell other people, that's really the heart of it, that's how we make our money. So, if you like what we do, help us make sure that we’re around. If you've got guest suggestions, feedback, other stuff like that, let me know: jeremy@whistlekick.com. Don’t forget we've got a Facebook group: Whistlekick Martial Arts Radio - Behind the Scenes, you go deeper on this or the other episodes at whistlekickmartialartsradio.com, and all of our social media is pretty straightforward at Whistlekick. That's it. Until next time. Train hard, smile, and have a great day.