Training Background

Yin Cheng Gong Fa

2006 to present

I began training in North American Yin Cheng Gong Fa (YCGF) under Paul Cote in 2006 in Maryland, being introduced to him by my Gao lineage Bagua instructor, Bob Galeone.

I attended Paul's Taiji classes with Bob and then began traveling to Pittsburgh to train directly with Zhang Yun laoshi in Taijiquan, Xingyiquan, and Baguazhang in 2010. In 2015 I became a formal lineal student of Zhang Yun, who leads North American Yin Cheng Gong Fa (YCGF), an association preserving the internal martial arts teachings of the late Grandmaster Wang Peisheng. My sponsors for baishi were Paul Cote and Clayton Shiu.

I consider Bagua, Xingyi, and Taiji as taught in North American YCGF to be my primary martial arts practice.

Kenjutsu

2006 to present

In the mid 1990's I attended classes hosted by Kato Kazuo in Yagyu Shinkage-ryū in Port Washington, NY. Kato was a member of the New York Yagyukai. At that time, I did not have the resources or wisdom to continue training.

Later, Bob Galeone introduced me to Clyde Takeguchi's Capital Aikikai. Between 2006 and the end of 2014 I practiced a subset of the curriculum of Katori Shintō-ryū at Capital Katori, reaching the level of mokuroku.

When our Katori Shintō-ryū study group leader was deployed to Afghanistan, I began training at the Hōbyōkan. From 2008 to 2016, I studied Kashima-shinden Jikishin Kage-ryū from Dr. David Hall.

I received a Hōbyōkan chuden menjo associated to that practice of Jikishin Kage-ryū in 2018, and taught in Seattle a small number of people in order to maintain my own practice as part of an activity I call The Gassankan.

Gao Lineage Bagua

2004 to 2014

In 2004 I began learning Gao Lineage Bagua after being introduced to Bob Galeone by Ellis Amdur. Bob's experience in informing his own Aikidō practice with Gao Bagua was helpful to me in shifting to more advanced body mechanics and tactics in my own taijutsu.

Beginning in 2006, I worked with Ben Lawner in Baltimore on a condensed curriculum of self-defense oriented grappling, which was a combination of early post-war Aikidō techniques with methods and tactics drawn from Gao Lineage Bagua, until Ben moved to Pittsburgh in 2014.

Aikidō and Kempō

1989 to 2005

In NYC, I practiced a self-defense oriented mixture of early post-war Aikidō, Nippon Shorinji Kempō, and other arts. It claimed to be a style of aiki-jujutsu. I left that dojo after I came to the conclusion that its practice was inauthentic, being developed in New York in the 1970's. The art remains a modern form of urban self-defense, which would more properly be called goshin-jutsu in Japanese.