Tai Chi Chuan and Two Hidden Skills

Tai Chi Chuan and Two Hidden Skills

They seem so simple, but I see very few students who have these two items.  One is a skill, the other is a method.

The first item is imitating exactly what you see.  I’m not talking about a difficult move.  I may demonstrate a certain arm position and look around and see many variations similar to my shape.  But not exactly my shape.  This seems to be a most difficult skill.  Many students simply don’t see that what I am doing is NOT what they are doing.  For some odd reason, in our culture, we can’t imitate with exactitude.  I’m not sure how to get this to change other than to remind students that they need to look more closely and seriously consider that what they think they are doing is NOT what I am doing.  Look again and again and again.

The second item happens when a student gets a correction.  Yes, they will successfully execute the correction in class.   Then the following week, they revert back to the original error.  The correction doesn’t stick.  The simple action that students don’t do is writing down the correction and then review it every day for a few weeks.  The error is assuming they have the correction simply by doing it once in class.  The reality is that they need to review it again and again and again before they have mastered it.  After all, when in error, they were in habit.  So if they don’t truly break the habit, they revert rapidly back into habit.

Both are a sort of blindness.  We don’t see that we don’t see what is right in front of us; we don’t understand that we need to be vigilant in corrections and repeatedly correct the same error until it becomes a healthy habit.  Both contain assumptions.  I assume that what I am doing is what you are doing; I assume that I understand the correction and I’ve mastered it.

So perhaps after “Relax!” we teachers need to say “Imitate Exactly.”

And then we need to say, “Write that down for review!”

Simple, right?