Straight Talk
One of the benefits of having serious students – students who are mentally present, value the material and work hard to apply the instruction as best they can – is that it’s easier to talk to them about important topics than a student whose heart really isn’t in it. In saying this, I’m not disparaging the latter students; far from it, in fact.
We’ve all been to “trainings” (lazy word!) we only went to because they were required, or because we wanted to see things for ourselves but realized they weren’t for us, or the material was presented in an obscure or boring manner. I once went to a required-for-work day-long seminar where the topic was property tax law. The presenter was some guy from the Indiana Department of Revenue and, to his credit, was a true Subject Matter Expert, really motivated to share what he knew, and tried his best to make the class engaging. But the subject matter itself was inherently boring, in addition to being useless to us. Everyone passed the end-of-day session with flying colors; and yet, it’s no exaggeration to say that by the time we received our certificates, we’d forgot half the material, 80% by dinner and when we met for breakfast the next morning before work, it was as if we’d never attended.
My hope is that what we learn in class is not like that. My hope for my students is that we all leave class eager to apply what we’ve learned. But this raises some perplexing questions. We live in 21st-century America, not a wuxia movie set in Qing-dynasty China. I’ve been studying tai chi since 1995 and teaching since 2018; and in all that time I can honestly say I’ve never cleared out a bar full of ruffians, or defended my nation’s honor against savage invaders, or defended a helpless village from wolf-bandits.
Maybe someday, but not so far.
Meanwhile, how do we practice what we’ve learned? How do we maintain our abilities and retain the knowledge? How do we break the cycle of having to re-learn everything each time we come to class?
Answer: The Boring Way.
We’ve talked about Practice at home, which is indispensable. There is no substitute for doing what you know in a place where I’m not there. It’s important to practice without a teacher around. For one thing, we’re able to explore how tai chi and qigong feels FOR US, and not just be a passive receptor for another’s ideas. Tai chi and qigong ought to be EACH OF OURS, not just something done by following the teacher. But we can’t make it ours until we actually take ownership of it; and taking ownership of it means practicing it ourselves.
This is ultimately where I’d like all my students to be.
I’ve said before that I see my job as that of getting you ready for a better teacher than I am. I used to say that because I was relatively new to teaching. I say it now, because I know who those teachers are, and what they can share with you. But an important step between where we all are, and where I’m no longer the teacher you need, is a lot of at-home practice. And this is because one of your most important teachers - the one who will never leave you - is you yourself!
Setting this aside, the next element of growth is what the Masters are talking about when they discuss the Civil and Martial aspects of tai chi. Tai chi and qigong shouldn’t be something we do so much as it should be something we are.
I’ve talked about applying tai chi principles in our day-to-day before. Some of you might remember the time when I taught the “non-martial” application of the tai chi kick in the bathroom of our former studio. In the same way, I have another boring application that happens just about once weekly.
After class in Highland, my weekly “guilty pleasure” is getting a couple roast beef sandwiches at the Arby’s on Ridge Road near Cline. It’s been there as long as anyone can remember and it’s always been an Arby’s. One of the quirks of this older place is that the door is really hard to open. Only takes getting caught by it a couple times to remember it. Now, when I go for my weekly treat, I remember how hard the door is to open, and practice my “pluck” energy going in and my “push” energy exiting. In another boring example, the microwave oven in my home is not at “countertop height” – it’s around knee height, and I practice my low stance and leg/knee/foot alignment whenever I take anything out of it.
The same thing happens elsewhere throughout my weird little world; I’m always looking for opportunities to apply the energies in tai chi, and sometimes it takes more creativity than others. You’ve heard me talk about how I use qigong while driving or afterward. I can do this because qigong is mine now, and that’s something I very much want for you too – I want tai chi and qigong to be yours as well!
But it’s not merely in the physical applications that I can practice. There’s also the mental and emotional applications:
This is where we can probably use our tai chi and qigong the most, if we’re honest with ourselves.
(from Chen Tai Chi Brisbane)
When we borrow a book from the library, we have the benefit of everything the book can tell us, but only for that brief period. We must return it in the same shape we borrowed it, which is only fair. If we own that same book, we can refer to it at our leisure, we can scribble notes in the margins, we can dog-ear important pages or run a highlighter over important passages. Tai chi and qigong are like that book. They can be truly transformative, but this transformation is a lot harder if it's only "borrowed" once a week and then put back on the shelf.
My goal for each of you is for your tai chi and qigong to be dog-eared, highlighted and scribbled in – there’s not much use in “borrowed” tai chi, which is all we get if the only place we do it is the time we have in class together.
