Early Influences

My first martial arts was Shukokai Karate I learned in Elizabeth, New Jersey. I then practiced a mixture of Aikidō and Nippon Shorinji Kempō after moving to NYC. In the 1990s I attended workshops on Yagyū Shinkage-ryū and Daitō-ryū and engaged in friendly sparring with friends who practiced Chinese martial arts, but did not stray far from my core practice. I told myself that in good time, when my skill at taijutsu was refined, I would learn a Chinese martial art like Baguazhang or Bajiquan.

In 2004 I visited a koryū enbu, a demonstration of classical Japanese martial arts, at the St. Louis Botanical Garden. Schools such as Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō-ryū, Shindō Muso-ryū Jo, Araki-ryū Torite Kogusoku, Tenshin Buko-ryū Naginata, and Yagyu Shinkage-ryū Heihō were represented. Each of these seemed to have a more subtle and refined method of practice than the rough and tumble methods I had been first taught in NYC.

There, while talking with Ellis Amdur, he asked me what was next for me, since I had recently been awarded the highest level of certificate in my current style. I told him about my desire to learn Baguazhang, and he told me he knew of teachers in Maryland – in fact, he had practiced Xingyiquan while in Japan under Su Dongchen, and was interested in its sister art of Gao Lineage Baguazhang.

Ellis introduced me to Bob Galeone, a Karate and Aikidō teacher who had learned Gao Bagua from Allen Pittman and Paul Cote in the lineage of Hung Yimien, a student of Zhang Junfeng. I began training in Gao Bagua with Bob in 2004. I subsequently received feedback on my training from Paul Cote and also Su Dongchen during his Essence of Evolution seminars in Minneapolis.

Bob was a senior Aikidō disciple of Kanai and Saotome and working with him has been a very important gift in two parts. His own efforts to understand the implications of Bagua on his Aikidō practice has helped me first understand my first practice was actually an independent self-defense oriented Aikidō school. Conversations with Clyde Takeguchi later helped inform me of the provenance of many of the techniques I knew – variants of Aikidō techniques practiced by Tohei Koichi and Saito Morihito, dating my teacher's teacher's training in 1950's era Aikidō. These influences allowd me to begin to refine the practice I had first learned into something more realistic and effective.

Bob also introduced me to Paul Cote's Wu Taijiquan class he was attending as well as the kenjutsu group practicing at Capital. I began learning Wu Taijiquan and the Yin and Liu Baguazhang Paul was teaching in Damascus and New Market, and eventually started going to Pittsburgh to learn Xingyiquan from Paul's teacher Zhang Yun.