When I was a young mother, I looked at pictures drawn by other young children, with the sky colored as a two-inch band of blue across the top of the paper. I confidently thought that I would simply show my young daughter that the sky goes all the way down to the horizon – and she would color her skies “correctly.” She listened carefully, smiled, and colored her two-inch band of blue just like every other child her age.
When I first started doing Tai Chi my teacher would say things that made no sense to me. I smiled nicely, and kept doing my form. Months (or sometimes years) later, I would have a sudden flashback and insight into what my teacher meant.
Keep your mind in the yin space,
Sometimes the insight comes when doing a sequence in the form repeatedly, trying to find the essence of the movement, the martial application, the internal balance. Sometimes the insight comes when watching one of my students.
It is not moving “to there,” it is moving “from you.”
It is why teaching is really just another way of learning and expanding my own knowledge of Tai Chi. It is also why I am learning patience with my teaching and my students. If the students have not understood the adjustment I have asked them to make, maybe it is not the quality of my teaching – or their willingness to learn and understand. Maybe it is just that they have not yet reached the developmental stage where what I am saying makes sense.
Yang rises; Yin descends.
It is also why reading the Tai Chi Classics over and over is so important. Each time I read them, I am coming from a different level of development and understanding. Each time I understand a little bit more.
The counter turn is inherent in the shift.
Sometimes students will ask what happens after they learn the form. I tell them and I do not know – after more than 12 years, I am still learning the form. But I am happy to report that my daughter did understand that blue sky extends all the way to the horizon – when she reached the right developmental stage.
Yes, in the teaching we become so much better at our own tai chi. We’re researching it, trying to communicate it 8 different ways. And the student teacher relationship is precious for the teacher as well as the student. It’s a series of mini enlightenments that are wonderful, and still happening. Congratulations on doing tai chi in Ohio!