Master Benjamin Lo, a True Tai Chi
Practitioner
By Wu RH, Compiled and translated by Tang
YY and Rick Yoder
My Tai Chi team has taught training courses
in suburbs of Washington, DC, with three devoted students of Ben Lo. Since 2000, in collaboration with David Chen
and Joanne Chang and, after David’s untimely passing, with Charles Votaw, we
had many great experiences working with American T’ai Chi players who embraced
the teaching of Master Lo.
In his class, Ben taught only what he had
learned from Cheng Man-Ching. Ben did
not add his personal opinion or splashy frivolous techniques. Zhanzhuang
(standing like a post) and form correction--the most fundamental of all
teaching methods in Tai Chi Chuan--were also among the most favored activities
in his class.
Even going back to 1990, post standing and
form correction were all Ben taught in a class that Tang YY, my long-time
translator, in North Carolina. That
workshop was organized by Frank Wong, a Cheng Man-Ching student, but it
demonstrates that Ben Lo’s teaching style did not waiver over the years.
In that class, YY recalls, Ben would, for
each posture, correct one student until he was satisfied before he moved around
the room and did the same for the next student. All the while, all students
were sweating as they stood, body weight on one bent leg. Their weighted legs
were burning, no doubt, but they were enjoying the class very much. Over the
course of a few hours, and only a few postures, the class would learn the
valuable lesson of simply holding the posture until the body could find the
correct alignment and relaxation. Ben Lo
would correct and position each person, but their body had to remember it.
The source of their burning thighs was
“bend knee down low”, or “bend low”, which sounds almost just like Ben Lo.
“Bend low” is almost a trademark of Ben Lo’s training method.
Bending low usually means burning thigh
muscles for a practitioner. Burning in the thigh, more specifically the
quadriceps, is essential to learning Tai Chi Chuan. Indeed, “no pain, no gain”
has been Ben’s core training discipline. In addition to his love for T’ai Chi
Chuan, David Chen was an accomplished artists.
Building on this concept, he captured Ben Lo’s teaching in this epic
painting: a practitioner in post standing, a flame burning on his weighted
thigh, underscored by the caption ‘No Burn, No Earn’.
In “no burn, no earn”, Ben pointed out
clearly the path he took to learn Tai Chi Chuan--a way forward for Tai Chi
Chuan practitioners everywhere.
Master Ben Lo passed away on October 12,
2018, in San Francisco, California at the age of 92.
