First, I want to mention that in July 2025 I had pneumonia and lost about 15 pounds, The lost of weight, together with my loss of appetite, had stopped in the first week or so, and since then I had maintained my weight at the reduced weight. I have since then gained back 2-3 pounds, and hoping to gain a few more pounds in the next 2-3 months.

I have also been doing physical therapy (PT) about two times per week at “Bell Wellness” which is located in the complex “Bell Works” (which took over the former Bell Labs location). This is a very convenient location, since it is only a few hundred yards from my home. Within the last month, I have also been engaged in a few wellness exercises at the “Fitness Factory,” which is also inside the “Bell Works” facility.

At the Fitness Factory, I am also working with weights to build back my strength and with walking (either inside Bell Works or later outside when the temperature is warmer). I also have a threadmill at home which I can use and practice together with other exercises like Taiji. I do notice that my overall health had declined, in the sense that after 15-30 minutes of exercise, I would feel tired and need to take a break.

With my PT and with other exercises, I hope I can keep my health from additional deteriation. I am hoping that in the next 2-3 months, I will regain part of my appetite, gain a few more pounds, and gain back my stamina. At least that is my hope. Of course, nature and aging will desire what will be the outcome.

In the meantime I will continue to do my PT and my exercises, including more walking. I plan to resume doing more Taiji. Hopefully I can stall the delay of aging.

I also want to give you an update on my health after I had my stroke a little more than two years ago in September 2023. Normally according to Chinese medicine, if one takes acupuncture treatment for a stroke, the treatment can be more effective if the acupuncture treatment is started within the first ten days of the stroke. If it cannot be started within the first 10 days, then the acupuncture treatment should be started within the first month of the stroke. Unfortunately, I was not aware of this information, and my acupuncture treatment did not begin until around summer 2024, more than half a year after I had my stroke in September 2023.

In early July 2025, I also had pneumonia. Although this pneumonia did not seem to affect me in a significant way, it did cause me to lose about 15 pounds during those 3-4 weeks. I am now beginning to try to gain back some of those 15 pounds, which is not so easy since I have also lost some of my appetite. Therefore, while trying to eat more to gain back some of my lost weight, besides doing the twice weekly physical therapy exercises, I also need to do more regular exercises, including with weights to build back my strength, much more walking to restore my stamina, and also more Taiji exercises to increase my overall health. Whether I will be able to do that consistently during the next few months will determine the amount and speed of my recovery.

As part of my recovery from my stroke, I plan to work out in the Fitness Factory located at Bell Works, which is very close and within walking distance of my house. Bell Works is also in the building where I do my Physical Therapy. So both places (the Fitness Factory and Bell Wellness) are within walking distance of my house. At the Fitness Factory, over the next three months, I will be working on:

(1) with weights to increase my loss of strength

(2) with much more walking and threadmills to increase my stamina.

I will be doing these exercises at the Fitness Factory or at home (since we also have a good threadmill at home).

Hopefully with Physical Therapy and these exercises, my health will improve. On the other hand, I may be just facing the consequences of old age.

Because my health insurance will pay for acupuncture treatments for back problems, In the last two months, I have been doing acupuncture treatments. Besides treating my back problems, my acupuncture treatments have also tried to work to treat on the nerves related to my feet and walking in general. It is too early to determine whether the acupuncture treatments are helping me to improve my feet movements and walking in general.

It is clear to me that to make overall improvements in my health and overall improvements with respect to my stroke, the process of recovery is going to be a major and long process. I will have to attack it from many approaches:

(1) Besides going through physical therapy twice a week (for one hour each), I must do it every day since every exercise in my physical therapy is useful, either to use the muscles that have not been used or used sufficiently.

(2) I must do more with the weights to strengthen my muscles, especially after my loss of weight.

(3) I must do the threadmill on a regular basis to strengthen my stamina.

(4) I must do my Taiji on a regular basis since I have not done it on a regular basis for several months.

I will do these exercises on a regular basis, and see if there is any improvement. It is also possible that it is just aging, and my health will progress based on just aging. Only time will tell.

In August 2025, I also accidentally updated my June 2025 article on Assessing President Trump’s Policies in 2nd Quarter. So we can no longer see that June 2025 article. However, we can read my most recent Sept. 2025 article “Assessment of President Trump’s Policies in 3rd Quarter 2025.”

As mentioned in my previous article (in September 2024) “Update on Recovering from My Stroke,” I want to provide an update on my progress from recovering from my stroke, I want to report on the progress that I have made in just the last two weeks (since 12/8/2024). On 12/4/2024 , at the suggestion of my sister Mei (Tow) Lam of San Francisco, who has a close friend who mentioned to her about Dr. Qiong Zhang Shen (his Chinese name is Dr. Shen), a licensed acupuncturist and an Oriental Medicine doctor in San Francicco who treated her friend’s stroke. I immediately flew from New Jersey to San Francisco on 12/8/2024, and have seen Dr. Shen everyday for acupuncture treatment and Chinese herbal medicine treatment since arriving San Francisco on 12/8/2024 and continued to 12/19/2024.

Although normally the probability of success by acupuncture/Chinese herbal medicine (especially for Acupuncture treatment) should commenced immediately and before the 20th day after the stroke (in the case of my sister’s friend, Dr. Shen’s treatment began shortly after her stroke; in my case it didn’t occur until almost 15 months after my stroke (my stroke occurred on 9/23/2023). So, I did not have high expectation for me of Dr. Shen’s treatment.

Each time after my acupuncture treatment (normally lasting at least an hour, but usually lasting for two hours) by Dr. Shen, Dr. Shen also spends a lot of time massaging the patting all over my body, and then he also observes my walking back ane forth. Also he gives me Chinese herbal medicine almost every day; he said the Chinese herbal medicine complements the acupuncture treatment he gives me. And after a week of treatment, Dr. Shen on 12/14/2024 told me that I have made good progress, including establishing new neural nearby connections in my body to bypass the dead neural connections in that part of my body. I myself cannot come to that conclusion yet, because I would like to walk on a treatmill to see if I still drag my feet, and do slightly longer walking to determine how my feet behave. I won’t be able to do those things until I return to my New Jersey home on Dec. 20th.

I did return to NJ on Dec. 20. After settling down, I did at 1:00 AM (on 12/21) walked on my threadmill for 10 minutes and later in the evening of 12/21 at around 7:30 PM I did walk around for about 30 minutes on the inside of Bell Works (very near our house) for about 3/8 mile (the distance for the inside walk of Bell Works is about 1/4 or 2/8 mile). This was what I found. I did find some small improvements in my walking, including on my left foot. But I still find some dragging on my left foot, espececailly when I got a little tired, like in the last 2-3 minutes of that 10-minute on the threadmill. Normally I do the threadmill for bout 20-25 minutes. So the dragging should occur more often when I get tired during the last part of a 20-25 minute walk. During the evening walk on the inside of Bell Works, I also found that I often dragged my left foot, and still don’t walk quite naturally. So my conclusion is the following: The acupuncture and the oral herbal medicine have helped, but they have not helped me to recover completely yet. I think it will take more time and continued exercises for my recovery to continue to get back to my previous self. I will provide more updates in the future.

Almost a year ago on September 16, 2023, I suffered a stroke affecting my left leg and left arm. Although it was not from a major stroke, it did affect my mobility and my stability, affecting the distance I could walk, the amount of time I could spend doing Taiji, and the time to take a break before I can continue. I want to give an update on the progress in the recovering process, especailly during the last 3 months. Let me summarize the results so far.

Current Situation

• After about 6 months of physical therapy (from Sept 2023 to beginning of March 2024) at the Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank, it was decided to take a break from the physical therapy treatment to see how my body would perform
• I also had acupuncture treatment by a local acupuncturist for about two months in this 6 month period.  Usually the acupuncture treatment should commence within 20 days of the stroke.  Since my acupunctural treatment didn’t begin until more than a month after my stroke, we were not expecting a lot of progress from this treatment.
• After the physical therapy (PT) ended in March 2024, I did continue to do some of the  PT exercises at home, but not extensively until around June/July 2024.
• Because I have Sleep Apnea, which occasinally causes me to stop breathing temporarily during my sleep. To solve this problem I have to use a CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machine with a mask to push air into my lungs during my sleep. About 10 years ago, doctors invented a method to replace the CPAP machine to automatically move air into a patient’s lungs. Inspire Surgery inserts a small battery in the patient’s chest to provide power to operate automatically a very tiny hook inserted in the patient’s throat area to make the patient’s tongue to open up to allow air to go down the passage way into the lungs. On 6/27/2024, I had this Inspire Surgery done by the pulmonologist Dr. Vishaal Patel.
• To allow time for my body to recover from this Inspire Surgery, the results of my Inspire Surgery was activated on 8/7/2024 by my regular pulmonologist Dr. Adrian Pristas. So now this automatic device has been implemented and activated in my body.  I will wait till the next couple of months to see whether the Inspire device in my body will operate efficiently and as designed.  I plan to update this information in my next update in Dec. 2024.

In the meantime, I want to give an update on an assessment of the results of my Physical Therapy (PT) exercises (such as walking on threadmills, various stretching exercises) I have been doing at home in the last couple of months.

Status Update

1. The PT exercises on the threadmill have definitely increased my stamina so that I can maintain the threadmill exercises for up to 30 minutes at a time.  However, I still drag my left foot on the ground, especially after I get a little tired.  I have to constantly remind me to raise my left foot (especially the front part of my left foot) to be above the ground. I should keep this in mind even if I need to slow down the exercise.
2. To increase my bending and stretching, I need to do more stretching of raising my left or right foot while lying on the floor on my tummy and raising the left foot or right foot backward and up toward the front.
3. I need to do more of all kinds of stretching to make me more flexible.
4. I need to do more pushups to restore some of the strengths that I have lost.
5. I need to do more of the Taiji exercises to restore my flexibility, my stability, and my stamina.

I don’t know how much of my previous flexibility, stability, strengths, and stamina I can restore in the next 6-12 months, but I am looking forward to making progress.

In the last several months I have also been doing Sleep Therapy (ST) exercises once a week to increase my memory. ST provides exercises that try to associate various other entities (e.g., activities, names of projects or people that may be related to the current names). Sometimes, I have the tendency of temporarily forgetting the names of people I see and whose names I used to know. Such loss of memory may be just due to age. We will take a pause from my ST after I return from the Asia trip.

It also ended my career as a Taiji teacher, since it was not fair to my students not being able to do the techniques I was teaching. However, I also know that the best ways to recover from this fallback is to make use of Taiji to gradually built back my stamina and to recover the Taiji techniques I have forgotten or unable to perform.

I am also to undergo Inspire surgery on 6/27/2024 to replace the CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machine I use when I go to bed to help me breathe and to minimize the possibility of short durations of stop breathing. The Inspire surgery also places a placemaker in my chest, and it does minor surgery in the throat to allow the lifting of my tongue to allow air to pass down the throat down to the lungs.  The placemaker has a small battery that needs to be replaced every 10 years, requiring a minor surgery.

This article marks the beginning of this come back. I do not know how well I can recover. I should have a better idea of this reovery process about a year from now.

In the meantime, let me jog down my current limitations. They will serve as metrics to help me guage my recovery:

• When I walk, my left leg has a tendancy to scrape the floor.  I need to lift that left leg higher so that my left leg is completely off the floor when I walk.
• Similarly, I need to bring my right leg up higher to take a step forward.  So that in each step I am bringing my body upward and forward so that each step involves an upward and forward motion.
• I need to do this on every step until I want to end this process.

I am sure that I will be adding more steps in this table as I proceed with the recovery process.

This caused my friend to ask “are there some simple techniques that could have helped an elderly person to respond in an unexpected emergency situation similar to what her mom encountered several years ago.

This led me to write the following article “Some simple techniques to remember and to respond in times of emergencies.”

The most talked about martial arts stance is the “horse stance,” as shown in the first photo below.  However. In terms of stability, that is not necessarily the most important stance, which is the stance as shown in the second picture below (the Chinese characters “Taiji Wild Horse Shakes Its Mane” refers to the name of that stance):

To go from the first photo (the horse stance) to the 2nd photo (wild horse shakes its mane), you make the following shifts:

1. You shift from looking at the front by looking at your left
2. You move your left foot over to your left from your right foot by about half-a-shoulder to a whole-shoulder-width
3. Your left foot from the knee down should be straight
4. Your right foot should be about one step behind your left foot with your weight evenly distributed between your right foot and your left foot
5. Your body should be upright mostly over your left foot

Note that with this stance, your body weight is supported by both feet.  With your two feet separated by about a shoulder width, you are able to withstand a minor push to try to get you off balance or cause you to fall.  Furthermore, both of your hands can be used to block or defend yourself, or to use them to grab or hold on something, or even to counter attack if the occasion warrants it.

A similar stance (a mirror image of the second photo above) can also be used by looking to your right, instead of looking at your left.  Then instead of having your left leg vertical from the left knee downward, you have your right leg vertical from your right knee downward.

The above bodily arrangement is typical of Taiji in the sense that you don’t place your two feet along the same straight line, but your two feet are separated by a shoulder width which provides stability from being pushed.  Your bodily weight is firmly supported by your two feet.  Your hands are free to be used to grab hold of something, to defend yourself, or even to counterattack. 

I think with such simple adjustments, an elderly person, as well as anyone else, can be mentally prepared to handle similar unexpected emergency situation.  Of course, the person has to be properly trained so that when such an emergency occurs, the response should be automatic, instead of needing to remember what you might have learned in the past, thus leading to panicking.

Of course, due to her senior age and no previous experience or training, it is possible that such a technique might not have worked for my friend’s mom.  But for someone younger and with training in Taiji, the above technique could have avoided that terrible incident.

Qigong Demonstration from Grandmaster Feng Zhiqiang:  First I want to give you some background information on Feng Zhiqiang (冯 志 强). Taiji has many styles. The two most popular or most-practiced styles are the Chen Style and the Yang Style. The originally created style was the Chen Style. In the 19th century after Yang Lu-Chan (楊露禅) went to the Chen village in Chenjiagou in Henan Province and learned Taiji, he formulated the Yang Style Taiji, which became very popular. At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a revival of the Chen Taiji, led by the then Chen style leader Chen Fake (陈发科) who became a famous martial artist, non only well known in China, but in the rest of the world. This led to the Chen Style and the Yang Style as the two most popular and practiced Taiji styles in China and the world.

Not only Feng Zhiqiang was a lead student of Chen Fake, he was also a student of the Xingyiquan expert and Qigong master Hu Yaozhen (胡耀貞), who was also an expert in traditional Chinese medicine.  Under the guidance of the two masters Chen Fake and Hu Yaozhen, Feng Zhiqiang combined Taiji and Qigong and synthesized a new Chen Taiji Style known as the Hunyuan (混元) Taiji.  Starting around the second half of the 20th century, the Yang Style Taiji and the Chen Style (either the traditional Chen Style or the Hunyuan Chen Style) became the two most popular and practiced Taiji styles in the world, with Feng Zhijiang as the leader of the Chen Style.

Now I want to show you a video demonstration of Qigong by Grandmaster Feng Zhiqiang.  Below is a short demo I found on the web which shows his demonstration of Qigong breaking a glass cup and a glass ash tray.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUv0Sb6mMdM (shattering a glass cup)

or

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2541872779359886 (shattering a glass ashtray)

The significance of this demo is to show that Qigong has the potential in healing when it is directed to a blocked artery, or a tumor.

For someone who has never heard of Qigong, the above demos may seem like fake.  However, for anyone who knows about Qigong and its health benefits, this demo is not a myth or fake.  For someone like Grandmaster Feng with his deep knowledge of Taiji, Qigong, and Traditional Chinese Medicine, the ability to execute this kind of Qigong and power is completely believable.

Many expert Taiji masters or other martial arts masters can exhibit remarkable strengths and skills using a technique known as Fa-Jin which means to issue or discharge a large amount of power. Below are several videos of people who demonstrate their Fa-Jin power.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q21hC_eNaGo (Lin Kuanchang)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGEP5X78G1w (Liang De Hua)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuW4UfaC-l8 (Adam Mizner)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNJebrhrVZ0 (Yap Boh Heong)

under the names of masters like Lin Kuanchang, Liang De Hua, Adam Mizner, Yap Boh Heong, and others, often in videos from “The Martial Man” Kieren Krygier.

In particular, I want you to focus on the first video by Master Lin Kuanchang, because he explains the technique that he uses to accomplish his Fa-Jin power.

In my opinion, applying the Fa-Jin method of force to an opponent should be able to be used in American football between offensive linemen and defensive linemen. The most difficult part of the technique is to relax the body in the proper way (i.e., “song”, or 放松 in Chinese). The key question is how long does it take for someone to learn that kind of technique and apply it effectively and consistently in a real situation of playing American football?  If that technique can be taught and learned in one year or two, then we could have a breakthrough technique of using the Fa-Jin method of martial arts to American football.  This could open up a huge application of Qigong/Chinese Martial Arts to areas not previously explored!

Original Style:  Chen Style:  It is more likely that Taiji was invented about 350-400 years ago near the end of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) or the beginning of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), associated with Chen Wang-Ting (陈王庭, 1600-1680), a former military officer who lived in the Chen village in Chenjiagou (陈家沟) in Henan Province (河南省).

Existence of Yang Style Taiji (Yang Lu-Chen):  There are many different styles of Taiji.  The original style is the Chen Style, which gave rise to the Yang Style, when Yang Lu-Chan (楊露禅, 1799-1872) from Hebei Province (河北省), went to the Chen village to work, and then also learned Taiji from Chen Chang-Xing (陈长兴) for an extended period (about 7 years).  Then Yang went back to Beijing in Hebei Province and taught Taiji.  Because many of his students were from the imperial court’s aristocratic class, instead of laborers, farmers, and soldiers, he modified the Chen Style Taiji to make it less physically demanding and more suitable for the aristocratic class, but not necessarily decreased its effectiveness as a martial art. Yang-Style Taiji which is mostly soft and slow became popular and spread. As a matter of fact, Yang Lu-Chan and some of the subsequent masters of the Yang-Style Taiji were superb martial arts fighters who were among the best fighters of their period.  During the next hundred or so years, several other leading practitioners of Taiji made their own modifications and extensions of the Chen Style Taiji and gave rise to the Wu Style (吴式), Sun Style (孙式), and Wu/Hao Style (武/郝 式).  The Yang Style became the most commonly practiced Taiji style in the world.

Reemergence of Chen Style Taiji (Chen Fake):  In the early 1900 there is a reemergence of Chen Style Taiji when Chen Fake became the most dominant martial artist and taught many people around China and the world.  There is an interesting story about Chen Fake.  He was the son of a Chen Style Taiji teacher in Shandong province, but he was weak and in poor health.  When he was 14 in 1901, he overhead from his relatives criticizing his weakness. That served as a wakeup call that he might not be able to carry the tradition of Chen Style Taiji.  So over the next 3 years, he diligently practiced the various forms of his Chen family Taiji and became well known and famous by winning many impromptu competitions where there were no rules and could be very dangerous.  His fame spread and he had many students in China and around the world and resulted in the reemergence of Chen Style Taiji until his death in 1957.  With a mixture of fast and slow movements, as well as a mixture of hard and soft movements, the Chen Style Taiji reemerged again as a popular martial art.  Therefore both the Chen Style Taiji (characterized by a mixture of fast/slow movements and a mixture of hard/soft movements) and the Yang Style Taiji (characterized by mostly slow and soft movements) were practiced by many people in China and around the world throughout the twenty century.  Some of the disciples of both styles of Taiji also became superb martial arts fighters.

Emergence of the New Chen Style Hunyuan Taiji:  One of the best students of Chen Fake was Feng Zhiqiang (冯 志 强) (1928-2012), who besides being a student of Chen Fake, was also a student of the Xingyiquan expert and Qigong master Hu Yaozhen (胡耀貞), who was also an expert in traditional Chinese medicine. Under the guidance of two superb martial arts masters Chen Fake and Hu Yaozhen, Feng Zhiqiang practiced diligently Taiji and Qigong, and synthesized both techniques in a new Chen Taiji Style known as the Chen Style Hunyuan (混元) Taiji.  Feng Zhiqiang became perhaps the most well known Taiji master in the world.  His reputation grew in China and around the world, especially in Japan where he had been challenged many times by karate, judo, and other martial arts experts and successfully met those challenges.  Today the Yang Style Taiji and the Chen Style Taiji (either the traditional Chen Style or the Hunyuan Style) are the two most popular and practiced Taiji forms in the world.

Who Is Carrying on the Tradition After Feng Zhiqiang: After Feng Zhiqiang’s death in 2012, Chen Style Hunyuan Taiji is continued to be taught in Beijing under the leadership of Feng Zhiqiang’s daughter and grandson.  In the U.S. it is taught under the leadership of Wang Feng-Ming, son-in-law of Feng Zhiqiang and who accompanied Feng Zhiqiang in many of his oversea training and teaching trips.  After leaving Beijing in 1994, Mr. Wang taught Taiji in Europe, especially in Finland, for more than a decade, with many students all over Europe. Then around 2007, he moved to the U.S., with his base in central New Jersey.

Form Names of the Chen Style Hunyuan Taiji 24 Form: The two most popular form sets for Chen Style Hunyuan Taiji are the 24 Form and the 48 Form.  The names of the forms in the 24 Form are given below: