a member of the Canadian Taijiquan Federation  e-mail: stevehiggins@rogers.com

The Chief Instructor

STEVE HIGGINS (L) WITH DR. SHEN ZAIWEN GUELPH, 1993 STEVE HIGGINS' TEACHING CERTIFICATE FROM DR. SHEN ZAIWEN

Steve Higgins, the Chief Instructor at Cold Mountain, has practiced Taiji since 1986. He came to Taiji as a therapy after incurring a serious martial arts injury (he blew an achilles tendon while sparring in Jiu Jitsu), and was quickly hooked!

The first style he studied was the "Taoist" style of Taiji developed by Master Moy Lin-Shin and promoted by the Taoist Tai Chi Society of Canada. This style is very calisthenic and non-traditional in that it emphasizes muscular stretching, long extensions of the body and a forward squaring of the hips. While with the Society, Steve also studied the Liu Ho Pa Fa (Lok Hup) long form.

Steve left the TTCSC in 1990 and became a student of Dr. Shen Zaiwen. With Dr. Shen, he was privileged to study Ba Gwa, Xing Yi and Taiji in the lineage of Yang Chien Hou. This latter form has 154 movements (depending upon how they are numbered) and can be termed either "Shen-style Taiji" or the "medium-frame, Old Yang Neigong form". It was preserved by Dr. Shen's family, who received it through Tyan Zhou Lin, an indoor student of Yang Chien Hou. It contains many combative and qigong elements which have been dropped from modern Taiji, and is clearly a transitional form which has preserved many elements of the Chen style, the oldest of the family forms of the art. Steve was certified as an instructor in this style by Dr. Shen in 1993, prior to Dr. Shen's relocation to Japan where he is now a professor of qigong at a Japanese university.

MASTER JOU TSUNG HWA WITH PORTRAIT OF CHAN SAN FENG

Starting in 1994, Steve studied the internal principles of Taiji under Grandmaster, the late Jou Tsung Hwa, at the Taiji farm in Warwick, New York. With Master Jou he trained in Chen Pao Chui (the "Cannon Fist") as well as related fields, such as "Five Elements" Kung Fu. These studies were interrupted by Master Jou's untimely death in a motor-vehicle collision in 1998.