Family Trip to Enlightenment
Everyone probably has at least one pet-peeve that instantly turns them off to any marketing pitch. It could be the “hard sell” of Crazy-Eddie’s-Discount-Mattress-Emporium (“ACT NOW! DON’T MISS OUT! DEALS DEALS DEALS!” etc.), or misleading statements (“The more you spend, the more you save!”) or whatever.
One of mine is in the form of a rhetorical gimmick where the
presenter starts with a statement similar to the following:
o Everywhere I go I get asked, “Jim, how do you keep your rates so competitive
while remaining the Award-Winning Industry Leader in ISO-3009 and WTF-Throughput Compliance?”
o People ask me all the time, “Bob, what’s the secret to your
Super-Fast®
1-Week Weight-Loss-Colon-Cleanse-and-Sexual-SuperheroTM Diet Supplement?”
o People everywhere are asking, “Kevin, how can I know if unlocking the Warrior
Power of the Super Samurai Seven-Hour Self-Defense Online Series® is right for me?”
Ignore the claims being made in the questions – I just made them up and did my best to make them silly. The peeve – and it only takes pointing it out– is that no one is asking Jim or Bob or Kevin these questions. It’s merely a trick they use to introduce the claim they’re trying to make. This gimmick turns me off because if the first thing the presenter is asking me to accept is a falsehood (that these oddly-specific questions come up in ordinary conversation), why should I believe anything else he has to say?
While I myself used a rhetorical gimmick to generate interest in the topic, I made no attempt to misrepresent anything – that “question-trick” really does turn me off.
The question in the title of this post isn’t one I get asked “all the time” or even very often. But it stands to reason that someone considering taking up tai chi and/or qigong will want to know how long it takes before they see results, or what those results might be, how long it takes before someone “gets good at it,” and all the other questions implied in the “How long” question.
The unsatisfying answer is “It depends.” It depends on such things as:
- What do you want from the arts?
- Where are you (physically/emotionally/mentally) now?
- Where would you like to be physically/etc.?
- How much effort can you put into it?
- And so on…
All of these variables mean there’s no definite answer. I used to offer 10-week sessions for the several abbreviated tai chi forms. A lot of teachers do this, with sessions between a couple months to as long as a school semester. The goal of these sessions is to introduce and familiarize the student to the fundamentals of tai chi. We don’t (or at least we shouldn’t) claim that the student will be “good at tai chi” after only ten weeks – especially if the only time the student actually does tai chi is the hour or so he or she is in class!
Anyone can understand that the person practicing every day is going to progress faster than the one who only does things when in class. This is true of practically anything. A very wise teacher on the East Coast once put it this way: “It’s not how long you’ve been doing tai chi – it’s how often you’ve been doing it.” There’s a world of difference in the two ways of looking at it.
I would be wasting your time if I just left you with the unsatisfying “It Depends.” Allowing for personal differences in both student and teacher, some approximate assertions can be made:
- Learning the 103-posture “Traditional Hand Form” takes anywhere from a few months to a year
- Learning any of the several abbreviated forms takes a few weeks to a few months
- Learning a single qigong "form" takes a few weeks - there are several different ones
- You’ll start to notice positive changes in how you feel and how you move after a few weeks, especially if you practice often and integrate both tai chi form with qigong exercises
- A great deal of your progress will be imperceptible – most people only know they’ve improved after they see someone new in the class and compare themselves to the new person
- Initial growth is slow because everything is new – once a level of competence is reached, growth and ability tend to accelerate
- Practice at home accelerates every timetable
Growth and advancement also depend on when, in one’s life, the art is taken up. Youth tend to want more dynamic martial arts; young adults have several competing priorities, parents of young children have zero free time, empty-nesters still have careers and activities, and seniors may have physical limitations that check the pace of their growth. We’re all at different places in our lives.
Those with martial art experience who have read this far may have noticed I never once mentioned how long it takes to reach this-or-that belt. This is because there are no belts in tai chi, and "black belt in qigong" is as absurd as "black belt in Pilates." There is a ranking system in the Yang style, but it’s relatively recent; few people know of it, fewer use it and fewer yet actually need it. Growth in tai chi and qigong, therefore, is taken as more of a personal matter or something discussed between the teacher and student. This is as it should be – these arts are intensely personal experiences, requiring introspection, concentration and new ways of thinking & moving. Arbitrary goalposts and strict schedules conflict with the personal nature of the arts.
Lastly, the question of “How Long Does It Take to Learn Tai Chi or Qigong” is, ultimately, unanswerable. I’ve been practicing the arts daily for around 30 years now and I’m still in the process of learning. The goal of each art is growth, not arrival. It’s like Erma Bombeck said of San Diego – when you get there, there’s no “there” there. I’m better than some people and not nearly as good as others, but I’m better than I was yesterday.
