How to teach Tai Chi

My teacher often repeated that she didn't teach Tai Chi, but 'only introduced the Form'. Of course, when we as teachers, in our turn, try to do just that, we soon understand that nobody will hear what they don't want to hear, and that this resistance is profound and unconscious. Setting a programme and insisting on adherence to it seems unlikely to produce creative graduates. It is more likely to attract those who feel comfortable being human tape recorders. But acting in response to circumstance lies at the heart of Tai Chi Chuan. As does learning by proximity.

For the western student learning the art in the Chinese way, the process may initially seem to be very strict. This can be both reassuring, and totally infuriating. Impatience often blows up to the surface. Over a period of consistent practice learners may find that their personality becomes less defined by an oscillating, mood-driven bundle of desires and reactions, and more balanced and responsive. True flexibility can be found in the mind, with quiet at the centre.

Calm is not stagnation though. As we become used to feeling grounded and centred, occasions when we 'see' the flow of things happen more regularly, since we're also quieter, and able to pay attention. Within flow, harmony, connection and responsiveness, Intent can sometimes be seen, like an idea riding a gust of wind. If you're quick, there's a small chance of jumping aboard the wind.

When time and serious study have done their work, both the imaginative and the analytical side of the mind may become more reliably available - in everyday life, in the performance of the Form, and in the partner work of Tui Shou ( Pushing Hands).

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My feeling nowadays is that these points are central to introduction of Tai Chi to others:

Firstly that we watch the student move, and lose ourselves for a while in what is going on for them, so that our advice is informed by aquaintance, truly indifferent compassion. We should avoid advice that only applies to the superficial aspects of a student's work.

Secondly, that we wish for the student to go further than us.

Thirdly, that as practitioner/ teachers, we be aware of contradictory desires within ourselves. One such is to pass on knowledge, but even this worthy aspiration can result in an unhealthy need to persuade students to be reproductions of ourselves. We need to form a healthy and effective ego, one which allow a student to develop their own Tai Chi.

Fourthly, as teachers we need to keep up our practice, and allow that practice
to go ever deeper so that we're not just constantly thinking, "How can I teach this or that aspect?" but that we're practicing the art for itself, developing our love of it and allowing it to take good care of us.


So how to teach Tai Chi? How to transmit Tai Chi Chuan? Constantly work at becoming aware of and reducing your personal agenda, your prejudices. See Intent rise in another person, as it has with you. Be helpful to them as the stream of desires knocks them about, and encourage their trust in the vast store of innate understanding which waits in these miraculous bodies of ours.

" Art is not created through theory - paintings and ceramics are created using one's hand and heart. Theories come later when the works themselves have already been completed. They originate from the works, they are not their origin."

Marc Chagall

Tai Chi study may lead us to concoct theory after theory about the ' ultimate technique' or the ' golden key to all the movements', but Chagall is always going to be right.

We may notice something works better or feels incontrovertibly correct, and then naturally want to repeat this, thus generating another theory, to explain and codify . In this respect, we are following the core scientific method of going from observed phenomenon to testable hypothesis.

But of course this is when the mystery and depth are probably going to vanish. So should we pretend to be stupid, blindly believing while taking no responsibility for what is shown us? Should we reduce every direct and vivid experience to the mere verbal recollection? Somewhere between there may be a third choice.

Every human adult has approaching 11 billion neurons in the brain and body, apparently, each of which connects directly to at least one other, and many to hundreds. This staggering complexity is something we embody physically, yet it stays intellectually beyond reach. When the stream of information is so immense and complex, we often resort to art or poetry, or even religious expression.

A so- called 'fractal' image is a small set of mathematical instructions, plus growth through repetition. Inside the largest, most overwhelming 'fractal image' is a consistent idea, succinct and with no clue of how things will end, as if an idea can set a whole universe in motion.

Surely an artistic or a spiritual insight is simple, even though the effects can be far reaching.

It seems to me that applying an insight to one's practise is subtly different to applying a theory. That is, a theory risks being reductive while an idea is always expansive. An idea spreads and permeates.

In Tai Chi learning we have a notion of 'lamination'. Practise plus idea plus time adds layer upon layer, until we're as resilient, balanced and load- bearing as hundred- layer plywood.

"I'm doing everything right and it still doesn't work,"and, " I don't want to push someone over anyway." Also, "Why can't I as a woman push that man?"

Patient practise of a new awareness of waist/ hara/ tantien and how it allows the whole back to release strength will produce a reliable underlay of strength after the 'acclimatisaton' phase. It has to become less conscious, more ordinary. Pushing someone over is fine. It just depends why you're doing it.

The internal strength grows as we feel more and more integrated, or rounded, in the way we move. It's no coincidence that some males often push fairly well, before some females, as they often have quite prominently that yang/ male interest in giving a push, from the robust world of boyhood, where it wasn't necessarily an aggressive act, just part of play development

If one has always associated pushing with negativity and aggression, it's challenging to lovingly, as a comrade, and with internal strength, have a go at launching someone.

What many males have to get past, however, is their relationship with aggression, which has no place in Tai Chi at the higher levels of study. Not because of some ethical clause in your student contract, but because it's unbalanced. At the heart of the tendency we might find a feeling of inequality, which causes indiscriminate competitive lurches against absolutely anyone.

A warrior has no time to waste on ideas of superiority or inferiority, after seeing that everything in the world is equally as mysterious as themselves. Equally extraordinary.

Getting skilful in Tai Chi without having done the internal work on oneself can make for a very energetic but distorted practitioner. Weaknesses of character may be magnified rather than removed or transformed, and the ego is then unable to take its proper place in the order of things, as a wise guardian in a complex world.

Moreover, issues of self-importance or -unimportance look farcical in the face of the Infinite, and yet almost everyone is frantically reviewing their score their whole life long. I met someone the other day with 690 Facebook friends, and they "know them all."

First Post

This drawing is called 'After Ploughing, Planting'. It's a meditation on what to do with all the preparation and practise a person may find they've accumulated over the years, in their chosen Art.

I practise Art, Music, and Tai Chi/ Hsing I / Ba Gua ( the so called 'internal' martial arts' from China), and this blog is a journal to plant somewhere the thoughts that come up during practising and teaching Tai Chi and its sister arts.

In the picture the landscape is huge, much bigger than the single figure bent to their task. Shunryu Suzuki calls it, "To light one small corner of the world".

When we go deeper into an Art, it gets harder and harder to 'report back' to others. All's fine for a while, as you can describe the techniques and difficulties that go with them, but soon you may find yourself alone and quieter than normal, and that it's not unpleasant. A lot of people come to a class to get an hour or so of exercise, and hardly practise during the days between. After a while though, their time in class may lead them out further, and the urge to practise builds.

We tell ourselves it's for this or that reason, but with luck, certainty collapses slowly and we just do it. " Be there while it's happening."

Kai Out