Interview with Sifu Adam Mizner Tai Chi Chuan Magazine

An interview with Adam Mizner by Ronnie Robinson

Adam Mizner recently appeared on the taiji scene, predominantly via a few well-placed
videos and links to websites containing minimal information other than video film. The films
seemed to focus on push hands skills where his opponent was bounced across the floor,
often violently with what seemed to be minimal touch or force. By contrast one clip showed a
quiet, internal and deeply connected hand form routine, which, for me, showed more of his
taiji skill than the dynamic push hands demos.
Maybe we could start by you telling us how you got into this business?

When I was a teenager I, like many other teenagers, went down the wrong path and I needed
something to straighten out my life and I happened to choose kung fu. My kung fu teacher at
that time said to do tai chi, so I did, and we went from there.

So your purpose for getting into kung fu, did it have something to do with the potential of
gaining a sense of discipline?

Thats right, it was for discipline and character development.

What age were you then?

I was 16.

That was pretty astute at 16 to realize that maybe you could develop your character?

Well I went the wrong way hard enough to get a little bit of an awakening.

Can you talk a little bit about the teacher and why you chose him?

He was the best martial artist in my state.

What was it you trained in and how did it fit with your expectations of what you were looking
for?

It absolutely did. It was a very hard-core external kung fu system, with a lot of torturing of
the mind and body to basically make a man of you. It taught you how to discipline
yourself which was exactly what I wanted.

Were you learning forms then or were you learning martial arts primarily?

Forms and applications, primarily applications, with a lot of emphasis on fighting skills.

With respect to discipline and character development was

the fighting complemented with meditation or something of that nature?

Not at the school but I started doing mediation within the first month of attending.
Okay, so whilst that background may have been interesting at the age of 16 it doesnt make it
special or link us to where you are now, so what was the journey you went through to attain
the skills you have now?

I trained in that style for four years or so and then I dedicated myself fully to the study of
tai chi and continued to study hard.

Where were you living then?

In Australia, on the Gold Coast.

Were there a lot of tai chi teachers around there then?

No, no. What actually got me fully into tai chi was a video of Master Huang. That
convinced me that it was an art I wanted to study in depth.

What was it you saw in the video that stimulated your interest?

Naturally the effortless power caught my attention in a big way. I had seen and felt
some amazing things in my previous training but this was truly another level. My qigong
teacher at the time showed me the video and could demonstrate this effortless power
enough for me to know it was not just a trick for the camera. Besides the skill shown a huge
thing for me was seeing an old man throwing around a bunch of young guys, and laughing
having a great time. There was a happiness and joy I had not seen before in senior martial
artists.
How often were you training?

At least a few hours every day, training before and after work, training as much as possible.

Can you elaborate on exactly what you were doing in the training?
In the early years I spent most of my training balanced between sitting meditation and
song gong exercises. Other than that I spent a lot of time on very basic form movements and
fixed partner exercises, basically aimed at learning how to be song under pressure and how
to receive force.

How has what you trained in, in these early days, affected where you are now and how has
where you are now changed from these early concepts you had about tai chi?

Totally different in the internal engine, the way I move is not related at all. There is no gong
fu left in my body, but it taught me how to train. What I do now is totally different but my
years in that school taught me how eat bitter, how to put the work in and not just float
around.

So it gave you a sense of the need to work hard to achieve what you wanted to learn. Did you
then move to other teachers to change your perspective of what you were doing?

I met other people who were training in tai chi and through them I met other teachers,
which led me to further investigation, specifically into Master Huangs method. As the years
went on I met other teachers from other Yang style traditions and kept searching and
learning as much as possible.

There are a number of branches from Master Huang and given that most peoples awareness
of this system nowadays stems from watching YouTube videos, where he seems to be
bouncing people around with the lightest of touches, you must have high expectations from
students. How do you deal with those and how do you feel about those who infer
compliance from those bounced in the videos?
I travel around and teach in many places, because of this I get to touch hundreds of
new people, many of whom have doubts and/or expectations. I am not concerned with
these things. When we touch people know, they can feel it, and then doubt disappears. I
have some strong critics and doubters, not one single one of them has ever touched me. Of
all the people that have come to meet me, or to learn at a workshop or class, not one of
them has any doubt left in their mind. Because there are many people I can only see once or
twice a year in a workshop situation, and because most people simply dont have any access
to genuine taijiquan instruction, I have after much persuasion from my students
designed and released an online training program. The discovertaiji.com program gives
students the tools to develop their own skills step by step and thus alleviate all doubt for
themselves.

As for the compliance issue; I find it silly, only all-out fighting with no rules has zero
compliance. Most civilized people dont want to engage in that activity. There is more to
learning tai chi that learning how to hurt people.

The thing that youve come here with is the push hands aspect, which is your main thing now
and seems to be what youre focusing on. However whilst this aspect of your work is
very clear and very interesting, what got me (from watching your video) was the quality of
your form. Often if there is a strong emphasis on one aspect the other part may be less but I
was really taken with your form and that was where I could really see that you had
something.

Its all in the form as they say but its only all in the form if its all in the form. If you do empty
form then theres nothing in your form. If youve got all the stuff going on then its all in the
form. The form is incredibly important. We balance the training probably 50/50.

At workshops people may not do the same system so we dont work on form.

So the pushing hands aspect is embedded in the foundation that we train in the form?

Absolutely. The way we cultivate the (ji bin gong?) the basic body skills, the form and all the
exercises is all in accordance with the way we push hands and the way we fight. Theyre all
harmony. We dont do the form one way, and apply another way.

How would you train the form? There are many ways in which people train with tai chi but I
get the sense, and I havent worked with you, that you do a lot of training in structural work,
a lot of attention to where the weight is and that kind of focus?

The first thing we do is train to open the body, so that the joints are mobile and the body
is sung, as well as standing work to sink the qi, thats our first doorway.
With the opening of the body, are you doing exercises specifically for that?

Yes, we do stretches and joint-opening exercises and sung-gong exercises to change the
body so that it can become sung and you can sink the qi to the dantien and then to the feet.
Then youre capable of attempting to do tai chi form. If your body is not open then you cant
sink the qi, even if youre doing the form it is not tai chi chuan.

Once we have the basics and the body capable of doing tai chi then we work on the specifics
of the form; namely the structure, the coordination, working on the body as well as the
sung, the qi movement at a later stage then how to produce internal power.

Im assuming that there will be an almost organic weed-out process about who continues to
work with you? What I often see is that people want to be able to perform a form and they
see that as the end result and because of this their form is nothing.

I usually dont attract those people in the first place and if I do then they only last one
lesson. The work is quite bitter and if they really dont work for the result of internal gong fu
then theyll leave very quickly.

People come to taiji for all kinds of reasons, often with greatly varied notions of what they
think it is. What, in your opinion is the real purpose of the art of tai chi chuan?

The original purpose of tai chi chuan really depends on what story you believe. That said it is
a fact that the art transmitted by the Yang family is designed for fighting. It is my
personal view that correct tai chi training will fulfill three aspects of training. Only when we
are getting results in fighting skills, in the health and vitality of the body and also the peace
and cultivation of the mind do I consider it to be embodying the essence of the art.
Students often come for one or more of these reasons, the same training routine provides
results in all three areas.

Where is the starting point for the work you do on push hands?

We start them very early on. Not in the first few lessons but once they have some sung,
some body shape then we start pushing hands very early. I want them to have an idea of
purpose.

At this early stage are you using the work of push hands to help them to learn the structure of
the form?

We do structural testing and things like that so that the push hands informs the form at basic
level, otherwise its hard to self-correct. If something looks correct and feels correct it doesnt
mean that it is correct. Its important to have feedback in your training all the time and
partner-work is that feedback.

Have you found, over the time that youve been working, that certain behavioral patterns are
coming from people that wont work that immediately shift out, then youre very quickly
then getting to an open vessel that really begins to understand the root that can grow and
help them to develop, rather than bringing all the history of the things that impede them.

The way we train is completely and utterly based on letting go, on releasing tension mentally
and physically and the process of letting go can be very bitter. If people dont have their heart
set on letting go then theyre not going to hang around. From the very beginning people
understand that everything we do is letting go, letting go all the time. We developed this
quality in the way we run the class, the way we train, and its all about letting go. Any kind of
ego or holding on to things youve kept from the past, it doesnt work.

When you say letting go, to what extent? Ive worked with partners who do nothing other
than yield and relax their bodies, even to the extent of getting pushed off their feet. Whilst I
agree that the key to everything is letting go, surely it has to be based on internal structure
and also the notion of returning the force?

Yes this is a common error, I would say they are not letting go at all. I call this kind of
relaxation a hidden kind of holding. When one finds true song/letting go then it is easy to
maintain correct structure. The combination of song, sinking the qi and correct structure will
lead to the development of peng jin, then collapsing will not be a problem.

Have you, or any of your students participated in competition push hands? Is that an
interest?

No, its not of personal interest to me, I kind of think its a paradox. To me its just a
training exercise. Its a little bit like a boxer entering a skipping competition. I think
competition is fine but it should be fighting. If you want to compete you should fight. Pushing
hands is a training tool for martial arts, not an end game.

I agree wholeheartedly. The problem with a lot of peoples pushing hands is that they see it
as a competition and it isnt, its a training exercise, end of story.

So lets explore the training aspects, what is there to learn from pushing hands?

In my process, and the way we train in my system, is really about changing the body and
changing the mind to create what I like to call the tai chi creature. Youre changing what you
are; not just learning a skill set but also in changing the mind and body and then whatever
you do is tai chi chuan. The process of doing this is firstly in opening the body. Second is
sinking the qi. Thirdly is mobilising or moving the qi, inside the body, to create the
different powers and skills. All of the training work, be it form, push hands or martial
applications is geared directly towards manifesting that qi in the mind and body. Thats all we
do, everything is about that. We dont do anything just to build a skill or trick, its all about
changing the way you move, how you do things.

All martial artists kick, punch and throw, we all have limbs and a torso but how that
happens is what makes the internal internal and the external external. Its the how that
matters, not simply the what.

When you talk about sinking the qi and manifesting the qi can you give an indication of what
you mean by this concept of qi?

And there is the golden question. In the Chinese martial arts world there is a clear divide
between the qi believers and the physicalists who think there is no such thing as qi and that it
is all woo woo. People often try to translate the word qi as energy, life-force, electromagnetic
energy, pressure and so on. I dont consider this productive. Every single person I have ever
met who can produce the high level skills of taijiquan has used the traditional jargon of the
art, Shen, Yi and qi are the fundamental substances we use in the cultivation of taijiquan
skills. it is best just to leave these terms in the original Chinese and pass on the transmission
as it was passed on to us. The traditional way generates the traditional results. If i was forced
to translate the word qi as it is used in taijiquan I would say that it is a process a word used
to point directly at a very specific process that is very hard to explain yet can be known
directly by those ready to accept the traditional paradigm and put in the work.

So what is going on with the changes that can happen through this work? If I get you right
were talking about a lot more than just physical change and the end result is a lot more
than just the physical result?

Youre changing your mind, your personality, your conduct, it changes who you are.
Thats exactly what I mean by mind and body change into something. Because youre
training letting go first by itself sung and then, more importantly under stress when
somebody puts pressure on you. First its cooperative pressure, and then non-cooperative
pressures all the way violent pressure. If you can relax, let go and release under pressure it
changes who you are at a fundamental level and this is the true benefit of tai chi. Being able
to bounce people across the room is great fun but it cant compare with being at peace.

That being said, we accept that push hands is a bridge between hand form and san shou or
free-fighting, do you also train fighters and how would your system stand up against other
martial arts practice, either in the fuller tai chi systems or other martial arts?

Yes pushing hands is a bridge into fighting skills, it is much more closely related than
most people think. Yes I train people to fight, the ones who are interested. It is rare to find
someone with the right talent and disposition at a young enough age to train to fight
professionally. It is something of interest to me. How does my training system stand up
against other taiji training systems? Best to ask any of the many people who attend my
seminars, many of them have been teaching for as long as I have been alive. As for fighting
against other styles or on the street, so far it has served me very very well. I have complete
confidence in the methods, but it always comes down to the student and their desire to put
the real work in.