Inside Kung-Fu Magazine
September, 2004
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An Interview with Dr. Michael Guen, Ba Gua Quan Master
Interview conducted by Robert Chu, L.Ac., QME, PhD

Michael Guen, Ph.D., L.Ac.,C.T. holds a doctorate degree in psychology from Boston University, is a licensed acupuncturist and herbalist, and a practitioner of other natural therapies. He is a 5th generation disciple of the Yin Fu ba gua quan lineage under Grandmaster Gong Baozai, and a thirty year student of Yang family tai chi chuan. An author and lecturer, he operates a clinic and teaches life practice and martial arts in Santa Rosa, California.

Can you give us a little background on your Chinese Martial arts training and experience? How long have you practiced? What have you studied?

I have been studying martial arts for thirty years. In 1973 began practicing Wu style tai chi chuan in Boston Chinatown. A year and a half later I began studying Yang style tai chi with Ginsoon Chu, who is Yang Shouzhong's second disciple. In 1977 I lived in Taiwan for two years, where I sought out instruction from many teachers. I was studying xing yi quan from the wife of Chang Chunfeng and from a disciple of Chen Panling, when I met Gong Baozai. After that initial trip to Taiwan, I went back to Asia nearly every year until 2000, when Gong Baozai and his wife passed away.

For ten years after I met Gong Baozai, I continued to study other styles in Hong Kong and Mainland China, mostly Yang family connections. During that time I met and received instruction from Yang Shouzhong as well as briefly from Chen Longxiang, the lineage descendant of Yang Chengfu's disciple in Sichuan, Li Yaxian. My other brief exposure has been to Five animal Shaolin, Wing chun, Aikido, Shuai jiao, and more recently Brazilian jiujitsu.

The martial arts I have sampled and fought against has been quite wide. But the steady reference point throughout has been the two orthodox internal teachers I met—Gong Baozai of Yin Fu ba gua quan and Yang Shouzhong of Yang family tai chi chuan. Each impressed on me completely different aspects of mastery. Grandmaster Yang possessed the marvelous dong jing , understanding force, and tai chi power; Gong Baozai brought me to a complete comprehension of the inner and outer mechanism of internal arts, which included a mysterious highest attainment called hou qi ba gua “latter steps of ba gua” otherwise known as, sheng ren zhi lu , “way of the saint.”

I understand you traveled throughout Asia, would you tell us about some of your experiences?

What I didn't mention was another major influence that radically affected my orientation towards martial arts; from age twenty-one to thirty-five I had frequent encounters with xiu dao de ren, representatives of several orthodox Daoist lineages in Taiwan and the Mainland, where these masters invited me to ru men and join their sects. Some even invited me to chu jia (leave home) and renounce the world. In addition to teaching me meditation, philosophy, medicine and spirituality, I learned from them a certain perspective on martial arts—that it was a natural preparation to letting go of all worldly desires to transcend the wheel of karma.

The spiritual influence bestowed by these Daoist teachers and teachings has had a huge impact on the course of my life, as for years I struggled with the decision to stay in the world or leave the world. Imagine me, a suburban Asian American kid contemplating the renunciate path, and the confusion it brought? Therefore, from early in my training, I had been introduced to an aim for martial arts that went beyond technical mastery alone. Even though I love fighting, I never since meeting these people viewed fighting as the end all accomplishment of martial arts.

What was the great Yang Sau Zhong like?

As a student of Yang Shouzhong's second disciple from the age of nineteen to thirty, I had the opportunity to visit Yang Shouzhong three times. For accuracy sake I need to qualify my relationship with the great grandmaster of tai chi chuan—it was not as a formal student. The first was upon introduction of Master Chu; the second was on a group trip with Master Chu; and a third was a private trip to visit Grandmaster Yang.

In the brief yet intense interactions I had with Yang shouzhong, he was extremely generous to me. From direct physical contact and detailed corrections and instructions, he gave me an entirely different view of tai chi than found in the mainstream. Everything was different: its temperament, the nature of the extraordinary power, and a standard for practice of the forms that I have not seen rivaled by any practitioner of tai chi.

The standard of authenticity I hold for the internal arts thus comes from having for years compared and weighed the methods, styles, character and dispositions of these two pure line masters. I saw that the original schools of tai chi chuan and ba gua quan known today were developed and preserved for generations as independent inquiries. All Gong Baozai and Yang Shouzhong ever did was one style their entire lifetime; which means that if it is actually true that they were both fourth generation lineage holders of the original traditions, each system held a reality that was complete and self-sustaining unto itself. This is a big statement. For one thing, it implies the systems in being self-sufficient, were originally resistant to blending.

Throughout my twenties I fought Gong Baozai's recommendation to develop my character and scholarship; at the same time, I was so taken by the internal power of Yang's tai chi, that for those years I invested most of my energies into training in tai chi chuan. However, the principles Gong Baozai imparted never left me.

Regarding Ba Gua, I know that you have studied different lineages of the art. Why did you feel the need to study various versions rather than sticking to one?

I actually had only brief exposures to other ba gua styles, most before I met Gong Baozai. Like many of my tai chi colleagues in the 70's, I was fascinated with ba gua and took various workshops offered by different teachers. Until I met Gong Baozai, none of the styles I studied put me in conflict with other internal styles. I could keep practicing ba gua zhang, tai chi chuan, qi gong, xing yi quan, all with no disagreement. However, the open body style Gong Baozai taught was so different from what I call the “turtle back” posture. Opening my chest, pulling in my abdomen and sticking out my buttocks seemed contradictory to what I had learned was “internal,” and it at first made me feel weak. This is the reason I didn't practice his style seriously for many years; I didn't possess the emotional strength to hold my body open that way. Another reason was that because it was practiced so radically different from other internal styles, dedicating myself solely to ba gua quan would have alienated me from the greater martial arts community.

Even as I delved into other styles, it always clung in the back of my mind that there was something special about the method Gong Baozai taught; the entire feeling and flavor was different. Later I discovered that my training in other systems built up my body in a way that made it “armor plated.” I resisted Gong Baozai's entire teaching approach of family style and the physical method because it threatened me. It was too open and intimate, making me feel vulnerable with my feelings; all of which I was not yet ready to face until I matured emotionally in my thirties.

Confucius said, “At thirty one stands up.” Gong Baozai interpreted this as meaning that one first has a sense for living for the sake of oneself. Before one has matured sufficiently in this respect, no matter how hard he or she may try, they are unable to embrace living beyond one's own self-interests. In my late twenties I fell quite ill from incorrect practice: fighting too much, taking too many blows, and indiscriminately abusing people. There was a passive anger I wasn't in touch with that was inverting inward and destroying me. Gong Baozai was the only martial arts teacher whose system, in offering an equal balance of warriorship, scholarship and medicine, could save me from my violence.          (read more...)