Robert Amacker

Robert Amacker – Taijiquan, style Yang

* July 14, 1944, in Crockett, Texas
+ August 1, 2021, California

My history in the martial arts began at age eleven, when I taught myself judo and practiced with a friend to defend against grammar-school bullies. After moving to Hawaii for my High School years, I began at fifteen to study Kyokushinkai Karate with Bobby Low at the Chinese American Club in Honolulu. I spent my college years (BA Mathematics – NYU) studying Gojuryu Karate, Kyokushinkai’s parent style, with Peter Urban, Aikido with Yoshimitsu Yamada, and eventually Taijiquan with Cheng, Man-ch’ing, and two of his most talented students, William Chen (New York), and Ben Lo (San Francisco).

Throughout the seventies I was a student of Chu, Ch’u-fang, who was one of three people to bring the San Shou form to Taiwan from the Chinese mainland, and was himself a personal student of Yang, Cheng-fu. Since the age of Twenty-one I have devoted myself exclusively to the study of Taijiquan, the only exception being a year of Monkey Style Boxing with Quan, Sai-hung. I also spent several years in the practice of Zen under the great Yasutani Roshi and his student Mr. Seikida at the Diamond Sangha in Hawaii.

With my life-long friend Martin Inn I started the Inner Research Institute of San Francisco and published a translation of the Classics of Taijiquan, later reissued with Ben Lo and Susan Foe in slightly altered form as “The Essence of Tai Chi Ch’uan” (North Atlantic Press). In 1997 I formed the White Crow School of Taijiquan in Moscow, Russia, and have devoted myself to this endeavor for many years.