Starting Out

Painful vs. Painless Effort

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Choosing a teacher is an important first step. We often learn of a teacher through word-of-mouth or from an advertisement. I would recommend talking with the teacher personally before you start taking lessons, rather than afterward. Tell the teacher why you want to learn t'ai chi and see if the teacher can be of help to you.

Because the range of t'ai chi practice is so very broad, teaching methods vary greatly. Once you actually start taking lessons, you may discover the method your teacher is using is not working for you. That doesn't necessarily mean the teacher is bad nor the method is wrong. Students learn differently. You may need to find another teacher.

I want to sidetrack here for just a moment to address something personal. Students will frequently criticize a former teacher to me. Often the criticisms I hear as faults are undeserving. When mentioning your former t'ai chi teacher, I would ask you to choose your words carefully and let them remain respectful.

Finally, the teacher can only guide you. You will most likely want to practice on your own outside of class. For many this is a stumbling block. You find yourself wanting to do t'ai chi but are just having too hard a time with your own practice and are becoming frustrated, overwhelmed, and discouraged. Take heart. Everyone goes through the same stages of learning. It's all part of doing t'ai chi.


Stages of Learning

The first stage of learning is to memorize and be able to do the t'ai chi form which is a series of individual postures linked together. These postures provide the foundation for all future practice.

Important during this initial stage is to develop the right study habits. Under the teacher's guidance, the student learns one posture at a time before moving onto the next. Emphasis is placed upon learning each posture correctly. Yang Ch'eng-fu, whose style of t'ai chi we are practicing, admonished students when beginning absolutely to avoid haste.

The next stage focuses your attention upon the mind as well as the body. You will learn the internal practice of the postures such as ascending and descending, yin and yang, and opening and closing. T'ai chi is not simply a physical exercise; it is a way of transforming and harmonizing both mind and body.

As you continue to probe t'ai chi with each and every practice, your understanding deepens. Difficult and elusive concepts suddenly reveal themselves with full clarity, and painful effort unexpectedly gives way to painless effort. It is this probing and deepening at work, moving toward what was always there and intended from the start, that now becomes the focus of practice.