Head Instructor Sifu Gordon Muir
Gordon Muir began his study of the Internal Arts (Neijia) in 1981 when he met the famous Tai Chi Master, T. T. Liang. He was fortunate to be able to visit and study with Master Liang in his home in St. Cloud, MN.
For a total of 14 years he worked one on one with Master Liang and his students, eventually learning the entire Yang Family canon of forms including: Yang Long Form, Cane, Broadsword, Sword and all of the Push Hands routines including the Two Person set.
Photo by Gordon Muir
Master Liang's book on T'ai Chi Ch'uan was what led Gordon to meet him and enter the world of Internal Arts of China.
In 2006 Sifu Muir wrote a book about his time training with Master Liang. Available here for Canadians, and here for people from the U. S.
In the early 90s Sifu Muir moved to the West Coast where he began working with Chen style practitioners. Eventually this led to his studying with Master Zhang Xue-Xin of San Francisco. From Zhang Xue-Xin Gordon learned the Chen 48 as well as Hunyuan Qi Gong and Silk Reeling. During one trip to China Gordon interviewed and worked with Grandmaster Feng Zhi qiang (Zhang Xue-Xin's teacher) over a period of two days in Beijing.
In the early 2000s Sifu Muir was introduced to the teachings of the original Chen Taijiquan by an acquaintance. He spent seven very intense years working with a student of Hong Junsheng and Liu ChengDe, beginning his study of Grand master Hong's version of Chen. This was a major breakthrough in both understanding and performance of the arts and also the beginning of a new way of teaching those arts.
Chen Fa-ke with Hong Junsheng
Eventually this led to Sifu Muir making contact with one of the best Taiji practitioners and teachers in North America, Sifu Stan Tabor of Boston.
Sifu Tabor introduced Gordon to Grand master Liu ChengDe in Jinan, China and in doing so led Sifu Muir to the true teaching of Taijiquan.
At this time Sifu Gordon Muir teaches Yang style Tai Chi, Chen style Taiji and several methods of Qi Gong. He lives in British Columbia, Canada and teaches in Victoria and on Salt Spring Island.
Our goal is to teach the Internal Arts of China in the truest form possible.
Through luck, persistence and 35 years of studying these arts we have been fortunate to work with instructors from the pre-Mao era and now feel a duty to pass on what they have taught us.
All of Sifu Muir's teachers have been mainland Chinese who studied with Masters of proper lineage and who made these arts their lives. They lived and breathed Taiji and Qi Gong and were strongly invested in learning the true arts.
One of the most striking moments in his career was hearing the story of how the most skilled person in these arts that he has ever met was watching a mass performance of Taiji on Chinese television. He was seen to be weeping and exclaiming, "Look what they have done to my art." A truly sad moment.
Without a massive movement to relearn and pass on the the real Internal Arts of China they are surely on the way to a quiet death.