Asking Questions

I find that Tai Chi students usually fall into two categories;

• Those who ask lots of questions
• Those who ask none whatsoever

An enquiring mind is a good thing to have, but when it comes to Tai Chi, you have to be careful. Teachers are in an awkward position, because an important part of learning Tai Chi is experiencing how your own body works, and how you arrange yourself (for better or worse). This then enables you to improve your posture and body mechanics, for example. By definition, you can’t teach something that is experiential in nature; you can’t describe the taste of a strawberry, you can only try one. The teacher has to be careful what answers they give to their students’ questions, because it’s all too easy for them to misinterpret the answer. They can then start trying to practise Tai Chi according to their idea of what they think should be doing, which could look externally correct but is in fact flawed in some way that could take a long time to undo if next uncorrected.

On the other hand, students shouldn’t just blindly accept everything that the teacher says. So how can this problem be resolved? It all comes back to practice. I learnt this lesson from one of the Chen family first-hand. My questions were silenced in part through a demonstration that saw me being thrown effortlessly (and quite hard) to the floor, and there was not a single thing I could do about it. I finally saw that I had done so little practice in the grand scheme of things that I couldn’t even ask a sensible and useful question when I had a 20th generation Chen-family member right there in front of me. I don’t exaggerate when I call it an epiphany. If you don’t practice enough, you don’t have enough experience of your body to ask useful questions. Once you start building this experience, either you will realise what you need to work on by yourself, or you will be able to ask much more useful questions.

Of course, a teacher has to be resilient to being questioned by a student, and I would encourage them to do so, but at the same time the student has to accept that sometimes getting all the answers up front isn’t actually the best thing for them. What you want to know and what you need to know aren’t necessarily the same! My understanding of Tai Chi changes constantly, and even Chen Xiaowang says that the mysteries of Tai Chi cannot be exhausted in one lifetime. Through practice, you can both find the questions you actually need to ask, and possibly answer them for yourself.

What about students who never ask a question? Well, there’s not a whole lot a teacher can do, although I find postural corrections are a marvellous tool for helping a student to realise they’re doing something wrong. This has the potential to see them doubting their understanding, requiring them to investigate for themselves. Postural corrections are the way a teacher helps a student experience the shapes and feelings in their bodies. Holding correct postures, besides strengthening the legs, helps to “burn in” the shapes, and make a big difference when learning the form (and by learning, I also mean improving – no one’s form is ever finished!). This teaching tool alleviates the problem of teaching something experiential by assisting the student to experience! It does have the drawback that it requires the student to be paying attention, but that’s a problem no teacher on earth can solve (at least, not without a stick).

What is Tai Chi?

“What is Tai Chi?” This is a question I have to at least try to tackle before we can have any further meaningful discussion on the subject.

Of course, I could give a textbook answer. I could describe its history, and how it came to be practised in the West. I could describe how many people use it as light exercise regime, or for relaxing and de-stressing. I could describe how some people practise it for recovering from or preventing illness. The thing is, none of these topics really get to the heart of the matter for me.

Maybe I should give a little background first. I should say that I firmly regard Tai Chi as a martial art. That’s why I started practising it, and it’s still why I practise it. I wasn’t looking for a method of spiritual development, or rejuvenating an aged body, or any other New-Age-sounding reason. When I started, I was already exercising pretty damn hard, practising a few other martial arts, and the only reason I started Tai Chi for just out of interest. Actually, I’d done a few weeks of it a years earlier, but it wasn’t what I was looking for at the time. The second time around, I had the chance to study the Chen style, and this was very interesting. The movements in Chen still held a vague quality as I’d seen the first time around, in that I wasn’t quite sure what I was practising, and I didn’t know what the purpose of the movements were. Despite that, I definitely felt that there was a purpose this time, and the requirements of the movements were quite specific – it was just that I couldn’t yet grasp them.

A few years later, I’ve spent a lot of my free time and a fair bit on money trying to get to grips with Tai Chi, and I’ve realised: it’s a theory of human movement. It’s also a martial art, because its sole purpose was originally for defence, but Tai Chi says that before you can learn to fight, you have to learn how to move. The fact is, most of us in the West don’t know how to move. We don’t even know how to stand still! We used to know these things, back when we were very young, but we’re forgotten, or picked up bad habits of posture and of moving, and now we don’t even realise we’re doing anything wrong. This is where the work of Tai Chi begins; fixing deficiencies in posture and movement, making us strong where we are weak, and relaxed where we are tense, bringing balance to all areas. This is a life’s work in itself, and an infinitely rich area for exploration.

Actually, I haven’t explained that well. As is so often the case in Tai Chi, the answer to a simple question can be extraordinarily vague, and is better experienced that related. For now, I’ll leave my answer as; it’s the way to discover how your unique, individual body can move with the greatest ease, speed and efficiency, and how it can integrate with your mind in the deepest possible way. No one can do this work but you, but you can’t put a price on the reward. Learn Tai Chi, play with it, enjoy it, and make it yours. Then, you can answer the question for yourself.