Instructor

Lenzie Williams

LenzieWilliams, 2018
Lenzie Williams, Diagonal Flying, 2018

I was born in Berkeley, California, and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. After high school, I joined the Navy for four years (one year with the Marine Corps as a field medical corpsman in Vietnam). About a year after release from the Navy, I started to attend college with emphasis in psychology and sociology. At the same time I attended Gestalt and other personal development groups and workshops, and also started therapy. Having discovered meditation and metaphysics, I became totally fascinated and deeply interested in this area. I then proceeded to seriously study different yogic, metaphysical, meditative, and spiritual-development systems for the next few years. This process led me to my long-standing Tai Chi Chuan teacher, Lo Pang Jeng (Mr. Ben Lo) in 1975. Intuitively and after several months of studying, I began to realize this seemingly simple, but arduous, Tai Chi system embodied the essence of all my various studies. It was a somewhat esoteric or hidden path to the development of one’s complete being. I discovered through this training system that one is taught the process of gaining deeper and deeper access to the Essential experience and wisdom of the Body, Heart, Mind, and Spirit. I had to some degree accessed some of these qualities in my previous work, but now I was asked or challenged to access them in the martial (Warriorship) context; and, even more, to access and apply these Principles and related experiences to my daily life. I knew this was my Gifted Work. With diligence, integrity, patience, perseverance, and passion I have been quite fortunate to continue to grow and develop in this Art throughout my thirty years of study and practice.Over the years I have also visited and taken workshops with other high-level Tai Chi and martial art instructors, in an attempt to begin to understand the full dimensions of the Art.

I have also participated in Tai Chi Chuan push hands tournaments in the U.S. and Taiwan. I have won or placed in most of these. Most notable was the Taste of China Tournament held in Winchester, Virginia, where I won the Push Hands Grand Championship in 1988 and 1990.

Of important value has been the multi-level lesson of winning and success, and also learning the multi-level lesson of losing and non-success.

With deep Appreciation and Gratitude I continued to train with my teacher, Laoshi Ben Lo until he passed in October 2018. Throughout more than four decades training with Laoshi Lo — and beyond — I have committed to working with my continually developing and changing self, with my beloved students who I feel so thankful to have, and with my Tai Chi classmates and the larger Tai Chi Chuan community, nationally and internationally.

Lenzie Williams, Fair Lady Weaving At The Shuttle, 2018