I don't know what she's trying to solve for, either
No, it doesn't.
Now that we have this depressing answer out of the way, let’s break it down...
It may be difficult to remember the challenges you faced at the beginning of your tai chi journey – the things you thought were difficult at the time. This is normal. As I said in an earlier post, we don’t remember a time when we couldn’t walk or speak or hit our mouths with a spoon. Since we learn tai chi the same way we learned to walk, we tend to forget a time when we weren’t at our current level.
You’ll sometimes hear me refer to this tendency obliquely in class when I say “That’s not a beginner-level mistake.”
The hardest part of tai chi is the first section. Everything is new and unfamiliar. There’s a LOT to learn in the first section. Once we learn the first section, the next two sections are easier, despite being longer.
The first reason is that the second and third sections already contain many postures/transitions we already know. The second is that we’ve already learned things like the Ten Essential Principles, Yin/Yang Theory and so on. Once these fundamental principles are learned, they apply across-the-board.
Once we know the Traditional Hand Form – at least well enough to follow along but ideally well enough to do it all on our own at home – we enter a different level of learning. The things we were challenged by at first are no longer difficult, but we’re learning new things such as internal energy, sensitivity, maybe some of the philosophical aspects of the art, and other more esoteric aspects. We’re not “making beginner-level mistakes” anymore, but the challenges are as real as those we experienced at the beginning of our journey.
Going “back to basics” is a part of every tai chi player’s journey. This too is normal and healthy. It’s a given that over time – no matter how good a player might be – lazy habits tend to creep into our expression of the art. Going “back to basics” is a healthy reminder of things we’ve forgot or lost sight of. We have opportunities to do this when new students come to class, or when we attend a seminar – as I said elsewhere, every time I go to one of the Grandmaster’s seminars, there’s always someone there who’s doing tai chi for the very first time. Everyone – from that brandie-brand-new student to Certified Instructors to Disciples – takes the same class and we all benefit from it. We don’t all derive the same benefits, of course, but our tai chi journeys are intensely personal. There’s no point in comparing ourselves to anyone else.
And this is all within the context of the empty-hand form – working with weapons is like “starting from scratch” all over!
So while it's true that we've left the old challenges behind, it's also not quite true that tai chi “gets easier” as we
advance. It’s just that the nature of
our challenges change.
In other words, we grow.
This is similar to real life. Think back to the last time you saw a toddler or young child have a meltdown over something trifling. I once watched a 4-year-old at my daughter’s birthday party come completely unglued over the fact that a balloon was a certain color. The child may have been overtired or overstimulated. She may have an association with the color – good or bad – that she didn’t yet know how to effectively manage. It may simply be that she expected it to be one color and was frustrated that it didn't meet her expectations. The cause doesn't matter a bit – the bottom line is that the child was presented with information she was unequipped to deal with at that point.
We might scoff at the child’s overreaction to something so insignificant. “You think that’s bad – wait until you’re our age and start dealing with real problems!” But of course we don’t say this (at least if we have any decency) because no 4-year-old can conceive of problems like work deadlines, "having more month than money," dealing with adult relationship or family conflicts, getting unwanted results back from the quacks and so on.
We do our tai chi at our present level and see new students struggle with things we’ve already figured out, and I'd hope we realize that we had those same struggles when we were new students, just like 4-year-old Us might have found a pink balloon too much to cope with. I don’t know about you, but tai chi has taught me as much about grace, generosity and empathy as it has about balance, coordination and focus.
