ORIGINS OF YOGA 17The teacher came into the studio and I could tell just by the way he moved
that he was a special breed. His movements were incredibly graceful as if
he were gliding across water. His structure was slight, slender, wiry, and,
for a highly trained kung fu artist, nonthreatening. If you happened across
him a dark alley, you would not be scared at all. This is what they say about
many of the great Taoist masters. These masters never stand out in a crowd.
Almost magically, they are able to blend and disappear into their surrounding
environment at will.
Over the next two to three hours, this teacher guided us through a series
of movements unlike any yoga I had experienced before. It was primal and
animal-like. The form was fluid. We moved all over the studio facing in all
directions, and at times we held certain poses for extended periods. I could
feel my muscles and joints opening in new ways. As the practice went on, the
density of my body seemed to disappear. Heaviness transformed into lightness.
This teacher’s ability to move through different poses was unparalleled. It
was almost like watching a circus performer. In fact, I’ve never seen anybody
enter and exit a full split the way he did. No human movement was out his
domain. He was a total master of the human body and I was a fan! His range
of movement and ability to control his body were jaw dropping.
The teacher was Paulie Zink. As legend has it, Paulie learned a style of
martial arts called Monkey Kung Fu from his teacher Cho Chat Ling. Cho Chat
Ling, originally from Hong Kong, was acquainted with a person who was sen-
tenced to solitary confinement in prison for killing another man. While in jail
and with nothing but time on his hands, this inmate studied the movements
of the monkeys outside of his jail window. He incorporated these monkey
movements with the martial arts he had learned as a child and a new form
of kung fu was born. When he was released from prison, he began teaching
Monkey Kung Fu to others. This discipline made its way to Cho Chat Ling,
who mastered this special martial art and took it from China to California in
the 1970s.
It is the responsibility of a teacher to pass his or her knowledge onto
the next generation. So the time was right when Paulie Zink and Cho Chat
Ling connected in California when Cho Chat Ling was looking for someone
to pass the art form to. Paulie Zink had studied martial arts in his youth,
so when he found Master Cho during his college years, he was the perfect
person. For seven years, Paulie studied daily with his teacher. About four
hours a day were devoted to strong (yang) martial arts training, and four
hours were dedicated to the soft (yin) style of Taoist yoga. It was a perfectly
balanced blend.
Eventually Cho Chat Ling had taught his student everything he knew. Once
his duty was fulfilled, Master Cho returned to Asia, and as the story goes
Master Cho never charged his disciple for the lessons.
Paulie Zink developed the art form into what he called Taoist yoga, a blend
of martial arts and yoga. The yoga component emphasized long, deep stretches