Biography of R. Yee
Early Years
I was raised in a small city situated in the Canadian prairie provinces. My parents, originally from South China enjoyed watching martial arts soap operas and movies in the evenings after work. These movies, with their stars Bruce Lee, Gordon Liu, and Jackie Chan, were filled with dramatic stories of heros and villains, justice and seeking peace and led to my intense interest in martial arts.
At that time, though karate was popular, our city did not have a Chinese martial arts school, and I longed for the day I could find a school and learn. Finally in 1979, the first traditional kung-fu school opened its doors and I joined immediately. From that moment on, the practice of kung fu consumed my life.
Over the following years, a wider range of martial arts schools began to appear including Taekwondo, Judo, Aikido and Muay Thai. Making friends with students training at these other schools allowed me to gain insight into their methods and furthered my appreciation of various approaches.
In 1986, I began learning from Master Chen Zhonghua. Master Chen, who had recently immigrated to Canada from China, was teaching Chen style Taiji in the park.
In 1988, Master Chen moved to another city. I began to reflect and analyze the skills I had learnt. As I taught taiji, I paid particular attention to practical applications and tested my methods as broadly as I could.
Learning How to Learn
Drawing on my previous studies, I became more self-reliant in my training and strove to find practical applications and methods. This proved to be a crucible which honed my analytical and mechanical skills. Since most of the people who came to learn Taiji were generally physically larger than me, I was forced to refine my taiji skills to the point where they worked on most people regardless of size, weight, or strength.
The drive to validate the efficacy of the methods was an incremental process. Each time I successfully employed a method, the validity of my approach was demonstrated and led to an increasingly refined understanding of Taiji theory and applications.
This process, employed methodologically year after year, was the basis for achieving a deeper understanding of Taiji principles and applications.
Training in China
In 1991, I travelled to the city of Jinan, China to spend the summer training under master Zhang Lian’en, a well known disciple Taji master Hong Junsheng. Master Zhang was powerful and strict in his approach to training especially with regard to the importance of deep stance work. By forcing me to work my legs to an degree I had never previously experienced, and by teaching me how body mechanics was rooted in proper stancework, my grounding and strength improved. Over the ensuing years, I continued to work with the principles of body mechanics that I had learnt from Master Zhang.
Around this time, I was introduced to master Liu Chengde, a well-known disciple of the famous teacher Hong Junsheng, himself a disciple of master Chen Fake. While master Zhang Lian’en’s training placed considerable attention on pure strength, master Liu Chengde took a different approach and taught me the soft side of Chen Taiji. The two master’s different approaches provided me with a more balanced understanding of Taiji training and its applications.
Other Influences
In my quest for methods that would improve my understanding of taijiquan, in the early 2000s, I met Amelia Itcush, a renowned practitioner of the Mitzvah Technique, a somatic training system for analyzing and improving body mechanical issues. After training under Amelia for three years, I was more than surprised to find that all of the injuries I had accumulated over many years of training began to fade and soon I was left free of pain.
The intersections between the Mitzvah Technique and Taiji training fascinated me and I began to incorporate many of the Mitzvah Technique principles into my practice of Taiji.
Lessons Learnt
The teachings of these masters formed the basis for my ongoing and evolving study of Taiji. While I know I have a long journey ahead, I have learnt with certainty is that people who claim they have have found the absolute, ultimate truth are, in fact, far more likely to have ceased learning and instead are stagnating.
In order to avoid stagnation and progress, my philosophy of learning is based on humility and the importance of learning from others regardless of their skill level.