Jim Burns, the ΓÇ£first student of T’ai Chi Chih,ΓÇ¥ recalls beginnings

T’ai Chi Chih was first taught to classes in 1974 by Justin Stone, the Originator of the form. But before it was taught to classes, Justin taught it to a sincere student who had been studying T’ai Chi Ch’uan and Zen meditation with him for a couple of years. Jim Burns, the “first student of T’ai Chi Chih”, (according to Justin), visited Albuquerque in early June this year after acting on an “urgent” feeling to find out what had happened to Justin in the 27 years since they had last seen each other.

Jim recounted with The Vital Force his studies with Justin, both before and during the origination of T’ai Chi Chih, and his perspective now.

A 19-year-old college student at the University of New Mexico in “1970 or 1971,” Jim was taking a class in Eastern Religions when Justin substituted for the regular professor one day. Justin’s lecture was on Taoism, but he also mentioned that he was a teacher of T’ai Chi Ch’uan and Zen meditation. The very next day, Jim showed up at Justin’s apartment for instruction.

What compelled him to do this? “[Justin] was — I don’t know how to put this — but the only American teaching Asian techniques in a sea of Indians. So he seemed very accessible. He was very down-to-earth. I liked his manner. I liked his stories,” Jim explained. “You gotta roll way back. This is the ‘pre-T’ai Chi Chih’ Justin. He must have been in his mid-50’s and had just come to Albuquerque, I think. The way he began was by teaching T’ai Chi Ch’uan, that he learned from Wen Shan Huang.”

At that time, Jim had been studying Kempo karate. Pretty quickly into his studies with Justin, he was told, “‘You know you’re going to have to make a choice — between karate and T’ai Chi Ch’uan — because your karate has ruined your softness.'” This infuriated Jim “so much that I became a very good T’ai Chi Ch’uan student!”

The way Jim remembers it, after “a year or two” Justin began showing him some new movements, first three that resembled Around the Platter, Bass Drum and the no-longer-included Circles Within Circles. He remembers Justin saying that these had been shown to him by Wen Shan Huang. Then Justin began to develop the other movements which became T’ai Chi Chih.

“He would ask me, ‘I’m working on this. What do you think about it?’ He told me he was developing this whole set, based on these three motions,” Jim explained, elaborating, “I was the sounding board — and I don’t mean on all of the movements — but on some of them. And Justin was very excited about T’ai Chi Chih because it was something he was creating basically from scratch.”

Later, Justin asked Jim if he knew a photographer, and there happened to be one living in his apartment complex. That man, Michael Spiller, took all the photos for the original text. Ou Mie Shu did the artwork. Skip Whitson did the publishing of the first textbook on T’ai Chi Chih in 1974. It was a yellow-covered hardcover book published by Skip’s company, Sun Publishing.

Jim was accredited to teach T’ai Chi Chih in the first teacher training course, which was held in Los Angeles in 1975. After that, he moved around for awhile, teaching T’ai Chi Chih in different locations. He taught in Boulder at the Naropa Institute where he taught Steve Ridley, the former Head of T’ai Chi Chih. He taught in Phoenix. He “sold [TCC] books on the road in Chicago” and “gave a presentation at Lake Forest College, north of Chicago, but couldn’t get enough students at the time to have a class there.” He also taught Skip Whitson.

At Naropa, he had taught outside on the lawn because he had wanted to teach “right away” but had been told that his class would first need to be advertised in their brochure. So, he had put up flyers, which had resulted in a small class of about three or four students. “Five or six months later, my class had filled up at Naropa, but by then I had just gotten accepted into an MBA program in Phoenix, and didn’t end up teaching that class.”

The last time Jim saw Justin was at a class Justin was giving in Sedona, AZ. “I drove up and saw him one last time — then went off to grad school.”

After trying to put together one more class after advertising in his new college newspaper, but finding that it didn’t fill up, Jim gave up teaching T’ai Chi Chih. But he continued to practice four of the movements. “They’ve been with me for 30 years,” he said.

Why did he leave behind the teaching? “I wasn’t ready at the time to accept that T’ai Chi Chih had healing properties for people — I didn’t believe it. [Justin] said it, but I didn’t believe it…And now I do,” he said.

What changed his mind? “My wife is an acupuncturist,” he answered, and he has seen firsthand how balancing the chi to flow through the meridians can improve people’s health.

“What I call ‘energy medicine’ has exploded. It was super duper woo-woo — as far out as you could get [in the early 1970’s]. That’s what I think makes Justin’s achievement incredible — he was so far ahead of the curve, so far ahead.” When Jim decided to get onto the internet to try to find Justin, he “thought T’ai Chi Chih was something that wasn’t even around — a flash in the pan.”

When he went onto the internet and, using search engines, located “teachers all over the place,” after coming across their individual websites), he was very surprised. He contacted one who informed him that Justin was alive and well in Albuquerque. He also was told about the T’ai Chi Chih community website, (www.taichichih.org) and about Teacher Carmen Brocklehurst who starred in the 13-part PBS series on T’ai Chi Chih in 1994.

With the perspective of a 49-year-old man — now the editor of a monthly wine magazine, The Underground Wine Journal, married, and with a 17-year-old son just entering college — does Jim feel that Justin Stone affected his life, and if so, in what way?

“Justin gave me my core spiritual practice, but he was more like a father to me. I’ve been a professional journalist my whole life. Justin set up my very first journalism job — reviewing The Fundamentals of Tai Chi Ch’uan by Wen Shan Huang for The Sun, an Albuquerque alternative newspaper. Justin encouraged my career. He saw I was a good writer before I knew it. He gave me support and he gave me my spiritual practice,” Jim explained.

He continued, “Justin once said to me [in Albuquerque], ‘I came here to teach you.’ And I thought at the time, ‘No, you came here to do this or that, something else,’ Jim recalled. [Justin has said before that he had been living in Taos, and one day knew he needed to go to Albuquerque. He went that day and ended up staying.]

Why did Jim suddenly make a trek from Southern California to Albuquerque, NM to see Justin Stone after a 27-year hiatus? “I had no idea, and I still have no idea…It’s like I told Justin — I am so happy for him, happy for the TCC teachers, and happy for the people whose lives they touch. I mean nobody could have been more pleasantly surprised than I when I found out what had happened [with T’ai Chi Chih] 27 years later. Because, how often do you get to get in on the beginning?”

“My whole life has gone in a circle. I didn’t study martial arts for 25 years. Then I began practicing kickboxing, and then Wing Chun” in recent years, Jim explained. Much of his four-day visit was spent refining his T’ai Chi Chih practice in one-on-one instruction with his original teacher, Justin Stone. He confided, “He says my Wing Chun has totally wrecked my T’ai Chi Chih, so I’m sort of right back where I started in 1971!”