Taoist Yoga with Paulie Zink
By Cara Jepsen
I've been curious about Yin yoga founder Paulie Zink ever since I heard he was Paul Grilley’s teacher. Not only has Paulie been teaching Taoist yoga for over 30 years, but he’s also an internationally acclaimed martial arts champion. So I leapt at the chance to take his workshop at last year’s (2007) Midwest Yoga Conference--even though my back was killing me. Fortunately, Paulie’s style was warm and humble and peppered with gentle humor-- which belies the fact that he has been inducted into four martial arts halls of fame, where he is known as "Master Zink.”
The earth-honoring Taoist practice he led us through combined both static yin and flowing yang movements and was designed to get us in touch with our animal nature and balance the five energies of the body--earth, water, fire, wood and metal. The practice is based on Chinese Taoist philosophy, which sees everything as interconnected and interdependent.
“The whole purpose of the art of Taoist yoga is to be able to restore your health and energy and well being--and also to allow you to restore movement to its natural state, which you should have had your whole life,” he says. Many of the poses we did resembled Hatha yoga asanas and had names such as frog and stump. They became progressively more intense as we flowed in and out of them, and they somehow relaxed my back and spine until the pain was gone. He explained, “The softer and more gentle you are, the better. Using more effort makes you tighter. You want to be like a glass of water being poured.” Paulie was a college student practicing Hatha yoga and kung fu in a Los Angeles park when he met his teacher, Hong Kong-born kung fu master Cho Chat Ling. “He watched us every day for a few days,” Paulie recalls. “Then he said, ‘Oh, that’s no good,’ and started teaching me a little bit every day.” The Taoist yoga he learned was a prerequisite for martial arts training. “That went on for a few months. Then he started coming to my house and teaching me privately after college classes.”
Over the next decade, Paulie spent up to eight hours a day learning Taoist yoga, philosophy and tai shing pek kwar, a form of monkey kung fu that’s based on moving like a primate. His teacher had learned the style from his uncle and was obligated to pass his knowledge on to one other student. That student was Paulie, who went on to win three Grand Championships at the Long Beach International Karate Championships and author two books on the subject. “It takes a lot of skill because monkeys are so low to the ground and squat easily,” he says. “That’s why yoga is so important. Students are used to standing high all the time. It’s important to be agile. Taoist yoga uses the flow of animals in nature--frogs, turtles, deer, bears and the five elements.”
Paulie has developed his own style and added countless variations on the Taoist yoga poses over the past 35 years. “Each of my students puts a different twist on it,” he says. “But the actual postures and movement are what I have developed over the years. The style is my own and will probably be different from [that of] other teachers. Mine is more of a yin and yang combination of hard and soft movements and flow. The art is to get your body to move like an animal--naturally.” Paulie taught for many years in LA before moving to Montana, and his celebrity students have included musicians Joe Walsh, Steve Vai, David Lee Roth and Michael Hedges and actresses Julie Christie, Ali McGraw, Joan Chen and Maud Adams.
Yin yoga is just one aspect of what he teaches, although in the 1980s (when Paul Grilley studied with him), he would teach only soft, quiet yin-like poses with long holds to his stiff, muscle-bound students. This usually lasted for about a year--or until they became flexible enough to do the movement-based yang part of the Taoist practice, which creates heat and builds strength. “I had them hold postures for a long period of time so they could go to flexibility and could move around without getting hurt,” he explains. “Now I teach stillness and motion combined.” He continues, “You cannot separate yin and yang. One cannot exist without the other. It’s impossible. It would be like a mountaintop with no base. It’s considered one, inseparable.” He says that Taoist yoga comes from a Chinese shamanistic healing background and restores health by clearing out stagnant chi, or energy--which is similar to Hatha yoga’s prana. “The Chinese developed this type of yoga, and would say to the student, ‘If you pay me a monthly fee, I'll teach you how to be healthy.’ So the students would do breathing, yoga postures, diet and lifestyle he prescribed each month. If the student got sick, the teacher said, ‘Don’t pay me.’ You paid the doctor to keep you healthy. If a patient was ill, he’d show them different postures to do and work through blockages to get the energy flowing again. It was very important for the patient to take responsibility for their own health. “It’s the opposite of what our culture has going on here.”
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Paulie will lead a workshop called “The Yin and Yang of Taoist Yoga: Returning to the Source of Being” October 3-5 at the Chicago Yoga Center, 3047 N. Lincoln Avenue (773.327.3650 or www.yogamind.com). For more on Paulie, visit www.pauliezink.com.
Although I have learned yin yoga from Sara Powers and watched her DVDS, and I have read the Yin Yoga book and watched the DVD from Paul Grilley, I was not so inspired as I was when I ordered Paulie Zink's DVDs on Taoist yoga. The difference was Paulie seemed to me to be truly a master of the martial arts and yoga (very hard to separate these two energy based systems) and he was truly humble. I offer yin yoga workshops and classes in the south bay area. Contact Debora at www.spiritualwellnessctr.com
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