The Chi of Vermont

BY: TOMMY NGAN
FEBRUARY 10, 2010

Passed on from generation to generation and shifting between cultures, Master Bob Boyd teaches the Snake style of Tai Chi from Grandmaster Ip Tai Tak to practitioners willing to undertake the disciplinary practices.

Situated in the heart of Church Street, Master Bob Boyd teaches Tai-Chi every Wednesday night from 7 to 8 and Saturday mornings from 11 to noon. During each session, students dressed in humble attire move in slow repetitive circular movements of the arms and torso while their feet remain grounded. Boyd’s general rule is that, “The slower the better. If the standard (Yang/Ip) form is done in 15 to 18 minutes in the beginning, this is really good. This is a relative short time to do the form compared to other lineages doing the form in 30 to 50 minutes so it is necessary to look why this is so. In Snake Style Tai Chi Chuan it is imperative to move the body absolutely connected, as one unit.” From this, the fundamental nature of Tai-Chi is not to exert one’s strength through speed alone, but so harmonize the movements and accuracy through rhythmic repetitive actions.

Enter the waiting room to the dojo and shoes of all students are lined against the wall. Periodically, someone will play with the Tibetan bowls which resonates with a calm pitch. Walk through the short corridor of wooden sabers and Tai-Chi long swords into the dojo. There is a sense of serene calm as the students move in rhythmic, and almost synchronized, patterns. Almost synchronized because where one student may be stepping into Zhan Zhong, two other students are practicing push hands and another pair will be practicing Snake Style Tai-Chi Chuan.

Almost a decade now, Master Boyd has been teaching the oriental art to the next generation of practitioners. A student himself of later Grandmaster Ip Tai Tak, the Grandmaster christened him as Bao Tak Fai (包德輝, meaning glorious virtue) in March of 2001. Grandmaster Ip allowed Master Boyd to teach the art. Following Grandmaster Ip’s death in April 2004, Master Boyd has taught the Snake Style Tai-Chi Chuan in Burlington, not far from his hometown of South Hero, Vermont.

When compared to yoga or similar exercises, Tai-Chi is a more internal exercise, meaning the practitioner is controlling his inner chi, an energy flow found in living things. Tai-Chi provides the body with relaxed movements that are performed continuously to move chi throughout the body in linear paths.

Prior to becoming a disciple to Grandmaster Ip, Boyd began martial arts training at 18 in Vermont of 1968. From there, he went to practice Okinawan Uechi-Ryu Karate for 15 years, under the tutelage of Master Uechi. Following his training, he returned to Vermont and opened a martial arts school in Essex Junction. He met John Conroy in 1974 and would become his Tai-Chi mentee. By 1985, Boyd began teaching Tai-Chi at the Burlington Tai-Chi Club. In 1999, the two of them went to Hong Kong and Boyd was introduced to Grandmaster Ip Tai Tak.

In an interview Boyd conducted with Grandmaster Ip, “Tai chi is like a tree. If you nurture it, it will grow. But it is only a potted tree without chi-gong. It can be knocked over. If you plant the tree in the ground, it will take root and cannot be pushed over.” Where more western exercises focus on the external attributes of the body, Oriental exercises focus on balancing the internal and external attributes.

Occasionally, Master Boyd is asked to host a Tai-Chi seminar. Seminars have been held in Pasadena, California; Newport News, Virginia; Brussels, Belgium: Prague, Czech Republic and various places in Germany. Each seminar emphasizes the importance and differences between snake style (Disciple style) and students style (tiger and crane).

Many speculators consider Tai-Chi to be extraneous and slow-paced because of the very nature of the exercises. There is no upbeat dance music to provide the rhythm that pilates brings to the mats. Not everyone performs the same movements as yoga. Tai-Chi allows the body to slowly warm up the muscles and mind into one chain, where the arms and legs, mind and body, have to synchronize to the rhythm of the heart. Even if the tempo and melody of the music is slowed to the melancholy beat of an erhu or Tibetan bowls, the body is most harmonious when synchronized to the heart.