By Sifu Kevin Grissom / 2026.04

As I continue to teach and practice our Shen Long Tai Chi Chuan, my understandings continue to evolve and take new paths as each part of the whole breaks down like waves meeting the shore, as the water continuously smooths and polishes a rough piece of stone.

I recall many moments of different experiences over the last 40+ years. Early on, when I first met Master Wu Kuo Chung around 1980, I was a student under Master Chi Yuen Tsai, who was originally from Kaohsiung, Taiwan, now living in the Chicago area teaching a freestyle Northern Kung Fu system. I had been studying for about six years at that time. Master Tsai had trained a lot of champion fighters and was a great fighter as well. I recall feeling his intense energy that made me feel edgy and tense, and I felt stressed and uptight all the time. Studying an external style with a lot of sparring makes you edgy. Even though I developed a high level of skill, confidence, and was in great shape, I felt something was missing.

A short time later, after meeting Master Wu, I began to feel a strong sense of peacefulness and calm when he was around, and I was attracted to it. Although he was intense at times, he was also very sincere when he spoke to me. Not long after, he noticed I was hurting and offered to treat some of my injuries at the time, applying acupuncture, Tui Na massage (which brought tears to my eyes), and herbal medicines. All the years of hard training and heavy contact sparring that I had done were beating me up. I had back and neck issues that kept recurring. One time I remember Master Wu pouring alcohol on my back and lighting it on fire! I trusted him and tried not to show any fear, even though I was deathly afraid of needles at the time due to a bad experience with a dentist as a child.

Master Wu was a traditional teacher, and his approach was special. I started to feel different being around him and wanted more of this peaceful feeling. It grounded me and gave me balance. Now, in the early 1980s, from the moment I met Master Wu, we began to build this special connection that changed my life forever. I felt at peace being around him and excited to learn everything that I could. Although his classes were very demanding, I couldn’t help but want to do my very best at all times and not fail.

One thing I noticed was his unique teaching methods. As I was very interested in learning Kung Fu from him, my teacher (MJT) asked him to teach a special class to a group of his private students in Downtown Chicago at a 44th-floor studio. It was from then on that our relationship of student and teacher began to bond.

So I began to drive Master Wu around from place to place, where he would conduct his lessons. I was able to participate and watch how he taught. Sometimes he had many students at one time, for instance, at the University of Chicago College on the south side of Chicago, IL. He knew very little English at the time, but he could still communicate to get his point across.

His presence was a spiritual experience, reflecting a peaceful serenity that I had never felt before. When he spoke, it was serious and heartfelt. His eyes conveyed a lot; they were caring and yet powerful, carrying a magical presence.

I recall him teaching a private student or students and how he went about developing people. These experiences helped influence my understanding as I flash back to many moments that I can recall. Not always knowing what I was seeing at times, in many cases, I related to some of them years later with a new understanding. At the time, my own focus wasn’t all about the art of Tai Chi until a few years later. Now, after practicing Tai Chi for years, I realize that what I thought was Tai Chi and what it was becoming were different. I recall moments of seeing Master do something or showing me something without understanding it at the time, and over time, I began to truly realize what the lesson was or how it related to many things. After returning home from our world training conferences, I would spend the next year or two working on the small details I picked up. Having time to explore and practice them in smaller doses helped me to be less confused from too much information, returning the next trip to once again fill my cup and return home to dilute and break down so I could digest it.

I began to improve with enhanced understandings of my Tai Chi, and I began to evolve to a point where I was able to relate to things so much better. Things my eyes had seen many years before began to make sense. I often found myself dreaming about being with Master Wu, sometimes with our Shen Long group and working on things, and it seemed so real. After I awoke, the experience stayed with me the whole day, sometimes for days; I couldn’t stop thinking about it and wondering if it really happened. Did Master come and visit me in my dreams?

Your brain has to calculate and revisit many things over time to digest them in order to make sense of and figure out these simple but very complex understandings. Many people get frustrated with all the information from the Tao’s ways. Deep in philosophy, it’s like a treasure hunt for me, and I get very excited trying to figure out the map to the hidden treasure. As I continue to practice, I begin to connect the dots, so to speak. However, without the hard work, I would never have been able to understand how each piece is part of the whole, and I am a collector by nature. Cherishing the many moments spent around Master Wu and my senior brothers and sisters.

I think about him telling us all about his time with Grand Master Cheng Man Ching and his reflections after his master passed away. He reflected on the moments they were together and how he recalled things he had seen but didn’t understand at the time. Through his own practices, he was able to understand much better, but didn’t fully grasp it at the time. Like why Grand Master Cheng used a feathered fan in the winter, this comes to mind.

Looking back, some of the lessons and interpretations have changed. Some things were lost in translation, but the true lesson lives on, for it continues to evolve through my journey. It seems to improve my awareness and enhance my sense of listening and feeling. This becomes part of the whole movement—a relationship with self that builds, looking inside with my mind, feeling all the joints, and being able to recognize and sense the foot center (Yong Quan). And the mind must be in the (Dan Tian) at all times, while doing less and reducing your effort with both the mind and the physical body. Achieving lightness free from restrictions.

At first, it seems easier said than done. You think you have something until you practice with a partner, and once you make contact, everything changes, and the breakdown begins. So again, I find myself returning to the basics, focusing on the first section of the 37 forms and our five Zuo forms, followed by reviewing the many other internal forms like Ta Jin Fa, Tuo Yue Gong, Xian Mo Jiang Xin, five columns, Shou Chen Fa, Golden Beam, and other Qi Gong practices. Eagle catching its prey and returning to the nest. Tornado, five small hands, eel rotations, wall routines, basic sensing hands, single, double, and Ta Lou, and bettering the flow of Ba Fa, and from all this, applying details learned to the (Jin) double-edged (sword) and more.

On top of working out the challenges and keeping up with my Nei Gong practices, I find wasted time in each day to fill. Due to time restraints between working full-time, commuting to and from work for up to three hours a day, and getting home late, I remember how Master would be in a state of practice at any given moment, not wasting time but taking advantage of the moment.

This brings back a memory of when Master and Simu, accompanied by students, came to visit me in the USA. We all traveled around to my classes, sightseeing and having dinners while talking about Tai Chi. I realized how everyone was not only enjoying themselves but were all working to help Master write his next book over the whole trip. It was happening at all times—there seemed to be no wasted minute. I still learned a lot about living in the moment and remembering the little things he did, how he was practicing without practicing. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, once I became a disciple in the Zuo system, doors began to open, and so did my eyes. Things that stayed with me from watching Master and how they were happening before my very eyes showed me how he filled that moment. Real Tai Chi can’t be seen at a glance; the small rotations, expanding and contracting, connecting, sticking, and following are all small movements.

Changing my habits is a work in progress. Little by little, I work to better myself. Time doesn’t stop and will keep moving forward with or without me. Reflecting on things like this, I still get excited to learn more. Thinking about high-level concepts, I remember how Master talked and demonstrated using Chi and softness to move a person with just two fingers by gently pinching a piece of a person’s clothing.

I think about points like this often as I practice and try to use this sense of lightness and softness. I recall my senior brother during a lecture in Taiwan applying lightness while he sat in traffic with his foot on the brake pedal. He practiced removing the effort and releasing any tension that was holding his foot to the pedal. So I ponder on these things and try to embrace this way of sensing my own self.

Another moment in time: remembering many years back when Master Wu was in the USA on our last day together around 1984-85 before he returned to Taiwan, we discussed many things that day.

He told me to write down all my questions, and we would go through them before departing to the airport. So I showed him a book called The Tao of Tai Chi Chuan, and he said he knew the author and that he was from Taiwan as well. Master pointed out a picture of himself catching a brother that Grand Master Cheng had Fa Jinged (uprooted) into his arms. I was excited to find that Master Wu was in the picture. How cool, I thought! So I asked him if I should study this book to help me understand more about Tai Chi. Then he took the book, opened it, and folded two corners of the pages, marking a certain section, and said I should study this portion that would help me to understand more about his Tai Chi. This was the most important part for me to take note of.

I began reading this chapter called The Classics of Tai Chi Chuan. Remembering the words to be Light and Agile, this quote always comes to mind: “If a fly lands upon you, it will set you into motion." This mysterious softness and lightness help to relate to levels to work towards.

So as I conclude my rambling about my journey as it continues from experiences thus far, teaching me all the different (paths) and directions that eventually flow from each river into one large body over time, I work to let go and do less in hopes of reaching a refined state of Wu Wei (no mind)—the whole body is mind yet empty.