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A long winding road brings me to this page. I had no idea I was taking it when I walked into The Tai Chi Chuan Center of New York in 1978. I could never have fathomed how my body, my mind, my whole life would be affected.
Throughout this website I have tried to be brief and to the point. The art of Nei Kung represents a formidable body of knowledge and much of this particular writing challenge has been like trying to fit an elephant into a bread box. I will continue to exercise some discipline in this section, but, frankly, it is here that I am having the most difficulty.
The reason for this dilemma is that no few lines of text will be able to do justice to the impact that the generous, knowledgeable and open minded Grand Master C. K. Chu has had on me; both in terms of his genius in the martial arts, as well as his example as a human being.
When I first attended class with Master Chu I was immediately impressed with his complete lack of pretense and formality, his availability to his students, and his humor. I had dabbled in several martial arts styles in the past but was put off by the repressive structure of the classes and the militaristic rituals of most instructors. This school and this teacher were completely different.
I came to tai chi chuan as a typical American who was feverishly trying to stay in shape with weight training, isometrics, calisthenics and all the other types of hard body systems. Every now and then Master Chu reviewed my stiff, tense, puffed up physique and gave me a little poke followed by a big laugh, "You look like a piece of concrete! You can’t move!" Nei Kung changed all of that, as it did the chronic low back problem I had been struggling with for years.
The atmosphere of the school was contagious for me. I took all the classes I could afford and though I never fought in tournaments, I trained with Master Chu’s champion fighters every week. Those were some awesome guys to be around.
I will hold myself back from going on at length about the virtues of true Tai Chi Chuan "soft style" fighting, but let me at least draw this analogy: Imagine two powerful bulls squaring off and charging into each other, force on force. That is "hard style" fighting. Now imagine a matador working another charging bull with a cape, moving with the animal just out of reach of the attacking horns, "sticking" to him until the exact opportunity arrives to lethally lunge with the sword. That is "soft style" fighting. The skilled Tai Chi Chuan fighter is a mighty and beautiful thing to behold.
Master Chu’s champions were grounded in a secret discipline which he taught only to them and the people who trained with them. Nei Kung was the source of the speed, flexibility, striking power and super human endurance which put them several cuts above the hard style traditionalists they would encounter in tournaments.
In the early 80’s, however, Master Chu decided society at large needed this fantastic source of energy and conditioning to heal and help all people and so he began conducting classes for the general public.
By this time I knew Master Chu fairly well and he was aware that I was an aspiring writer. In 1983, he asked me to help him draft a letter related to a complicated business entanglement. I agreed to do it and between the two of us we crafted a highly effective response to the matter which resolved the issue completely. Master Chu was very pleased. Soon after, he approached me with an idea for assisting him in undertaking a bigger project.
Beyond the classes and seminars that he was now holding in Nei Kung, Master Chu wanted to put on paper a record of his synthesis of this remarkable system. He wanted to delineate it exactly, clearly, in an understandable, and yet, precise way. He wanted to write The Book of Nei Kung. This had never been done before in either English or Chinese, ever. He offered me the full range of classes at the school free in exchange for helping him put this knowledge into English.
For the next two years I took virtually every class I could during the week and every Saturday Master Chu established a routine for us: From the early morning until noon I attended the series of training classes with the other students. At noon, a light meal was ordered in, and then the rest of the day, he and I worked on the book. My job was to pick his brain and try to record, reference and make sense in English out of all of the various concepts and principles he expounded on. I soon found my western mind stretching across a cultural as well as a linguistic divide.
Throughout, Master Chu was patient and relaxed, bringing his own special brand of scientific method and humor to bear on all aspects of leading me to an understanding of this high art which represented his life’s work. These sessions opened up whole new subjects for me that I never even knew existed and, needless to say, inspired a voluminous amount of note taking and further reading and study on my part.
Since Nei Kung was the foundation for the entire system of Tai Chi Chuan he espoused, the range of subject matter stretched from secret principles of physical conditioning, to theories of fighting and martial art styles, to Chinese history, medicine and acupuncture, to philosophy, meditation technique and interpretation of the Tao Te Ching, the seminal Taoist tract which started it all. The breadth of this man’s knowledge was absolutely enormous. And so, consequently, was the first draft of the book, which totaled over four hundred pages.
Absolute accuracy and precision were paramount in Master Chu’s mind. This book was to be both an explanation and a practical workbook. Beyond illuminating the core principles of correct alignment in the system, each of the ten postures, which were to be later photographed, needed to be delineated in exact sequential instruction that would reflect the sequence of the pictures. Eventually, after two years of rewrites, the massive manuscript got boiled down to seventy-five pages of crystalline essentials.
In the evening, on those Saturdays, when we finished our work for the day, Master Chu took me down to Chinatown for a meal at one of the many restaurants where he is known simply as Sifu, meaning Master. Here, too, he was full of information, always eager to explain any aspect of Chinese culture to me from every day life to the most esoteric concepts of the great historical sages. For me, this whole experience was far more than just assisting a man with the text of a book, it was an education.
In 1986, the Book of Nei Kung was published. It has been honored by both martial arts masters and laymen alike as a ground breaking classic.
I stayed on with my classes for some years after that until, as with all things, time and circumstance took me elsewhere.
In 1992, I came to a fork in the road in my life and made a choice, although I didn’t know that was what I was doing at the time. Career opportunities had brought me to Los Angeles and in the course of business I made the acquaintance of a fellow New Yorker. Somewhere in the middle of a conversation at lunch one day, he mentioned that he had taken a great seminar in Chinese energy exercises in New York with a Tai Chi master and that he wished the teacher was in L.A. so that he could study here. I asked him what the teacher’s name was and when he said Master Chu I told him my whole story. He flipped out over the coincidence. He offered right then to pay me to teach him the Nei Kung system.
Although I had been practicing Nei Kung consistently over the years, I never considering teaching it. I didn’t see myself that way. I said I would love to try it, but that I would have to get Master Chu’s permission. When I called to ask Master Chu his response was simple and direct, "Yes. I certify you. Open a school if you want." So I started teaching.
From this one student, others came; and by word of mouth, more came; and now these many years later, I have introduced literally hundreds of people to Nei Kung.
Assisting Master Chu with the writing of The Book of Nei Kung led me to the teaching of Nei Kung which led me to the writing of this website. Hopefully, this website will lead you to Nei Kung.
If you do not live in the vicinity of New York City and cannot study with the Master, himself; or if you do not live in the vicinity of Los Angeles and can’t study with me; consider taking a trip to New York City one weekend to attend one of the fabled monthly workshops Master Chu conducts at the Tai Chi Chuan Center. You can find information about them on his website, www.Chutaichi.com.
As I said at the opening, my journey with Nei Kung has been one of unexpected rewards since the very beginning; from the first exuberant experience of bountiful energy and well being as a result of being a practitioner, to the influx of the many intelligent and interesting people who have come into my life as a the result of being a teacher. My hope is that you will want to become a practitioner, too.
One last thing I wish to do is display my Letter of Certification from Tai Chi Chuan Grand Master C.K. Chu which is one of the proudest accomplishments of my life and which I hold in inestimable value.
Best of luck to you and go with Nature.
James Borrelli
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