Zosia Gorbaty had to work very hard to convince me to apply to the first Association of Women Martial Arts Instructor’s (AWMAI) Hall of Fame. Zosia was the Executive Director of AWMAI at that time and she and Certification Director Janice Okamoto decided it was high time to create the Hall of Fame as a vehicle to recognize leadership and accomplishment within the world of women martial arts instructors. Due to my own travel & hosting schedule I had not become involved with any organization really and honestly, I was more comfortable staying under the recognition radar. But for those of you who know Zosia, she is a force of nature and I was soon to learn resistance was futile!
I got to work collecting photos, certifications and letters of recommendations for my application. It was really the first reflective moment I had taken in then 32 years of training and seeing all of it laid out made my eyes spin a bit. The hardest ask for me were the letters of recommendation. I was truly uncomfortable to ask anyone to speak of how they know me and describe the value I may have brought to my field. I asked Gunther Weil, Bill Helm and Andy Dale, all people and practitioners I respected a great deal and who had strongly supported me along my way. They wrote truly beautiful letters for me. I also submitted the required class proposal and was accepted.
The 2012 conference and award ceremony was transformational for me. Never before had I been with so many accomplished women in one setting. Never before had I been celebrated as one myself. We all bonded deeply that weekend, taking each other’s classes which ranged from Jujitsu to Karate to Qigong. Each class was taught by an award recipient of 30+ - 60+ years in the Martial Arts. A highlight for all of us was Bernice Jay, with over 60 years of experience training and teaching Jujitsu, Judo & Seifukujutsu. Sensei Bernice though had another skill set: Lomi Lomi massage. I gratefully submitted my shoulders for her to work on, but don’t get the idea it was anything relaxing! Old School all the way. It was also our honor to meet Sensei Teru Hendry, 86 years old at that time. Sensei Teru was born into a Samurai family and started training when she was 12, stopping only for WWII.
I met and am still in contact with many amazing women from that weekend and I remain good friends with Zosia to this day. AWMAI Hall of Fame awards continue and when covid clears up I’m going for my 40+. Other female organizations of note are PAWMA and NWMAF and along with AWMAI, offer women a chance to fully inhabit and be acknowledged for their power and grace in ways that can be difficult within the patriarchal hierarchy of the martial arts.
The Moon continued to host the usual suspects that year, though I believe this was the first year CXW did not come due to his increasingly busy schedule. CXX’s workshops were growing however and Village Training had taken root at the Moon. 2012 was also the year where the British were coming! David Gaffney & Davidine Sim began traveling to San Diego and Seattle then and have truly become fan favorites ever since. I cannot impress upon you readers how their teaching and breadth and depth of understanding has expanded all of our knowledge of Chen Family Taijiquan though the years. Additionally, they are a joy to host. They love to travel and see new landscapes and we have all made several trips with them showing off what is best about America. They continue to teach us and we know we all look forward to their workshops and visits as soon as it possible to arrange them.
2012 was also a painful year. Gaspar Garcia, in the second year of another teacher training ran into some personal difficulties. It was actually the last time we were to see him. We had made big plans for the Luohan in the United States and this program was its launch. It was not to be at least not in the way we envisioned it. I gave the trainees the option to get a refund on their program fee or continue with me as its director. They all chose to stay.
I then contracted several highly skilled professionals to join the program as instructors: Joe DeShaw (Anatomy), Jackie Close & David Tucker (Chinese Medicine) Harrison Moretz (Taoist Philosophy) and Saiko Shima (Yoga). Each of these professionals went out of their way for me and for the students. Additionally, the students were required to attend an element of the visiting Taijiquan Grandmaster’s workshops. It was an ambitious, strict endeavor, but I knew what my students were headed into if they were to teach. The field had grown since my early days and the expectations were higher. So were mine. I knew where the holes in the field were and I didn’t want my students to step into any of them if I could help it. I suppose, too, given the circumstances I found myself in as the program’s default director, I had something to prove as well.
The exam was legendary. It included a written test - a 250 question and essay format, a project/paper on a topic of their choosing, a demonstration of teaching and performance skill in the Hands of the 18 Luohan, all of its associated breathing and walking patterns, The Muscle Tendon Changing Bone Marrow Washing and an oral exam. They also were required to hand write 12 thank you notes to people who had helped them grow. This tradition was started by my first teacher. After we tested for Black Belt we had to write a thank you note to every single person that helped us achieve our rank. It took weeks. It is a marvelous tradition.
The experience has most assuredly gone down in Moon lore. The examining board consisted of Certified Luohan Instructors Joyce Broderson and Brian Hata, Certified Soaring Crane (et.al) Instructor Andrew Walker, senior student Kathleen O’hanlon, and new student (at that time) Russel Regan, and myself. It was December, 2012. The examination began at 5:45 pm and lasted until 12:40 am the next morning. It was grueling. Everyone passed some portion of the exam, but a few did need to re-take some of it the next year. After this experience I understood better why, years earlier, Gaspar did not pass everyone. To this day I remain, like my teachers before me, a very hard teacher to please when it comes to passing and certifying students to teach. Therefore, I am very proud of those who cross that threshold in both Taijiquan and Qigong and have the greatest confidence in them to pass on the traditions with integrity.
