What To Teach & What To Practice?

This is something that is constantly on my mind while I’m teaching Tai Chi, Xing Yi and Qi Gong. I’ve come to the understanding that it's about balancing the theory and hard work of these arts while making it enjoyable and fun too. 

If I continually teach classes that have people standing in tough stances for an hour at a time doing what we call Zhan Zhuang, the students will fly forward in their progress, but this is tough training and not always enjoyable at the beginning. Most people would leave. So, I’ve learned to balance the tough with the fun. 

In China they call this tough training ‘Chewing the Bitter’. It’s when you do something that is hard in order to get the reward at the other end. A great boxer does not become the world champion by only training occasionally and rarely doing the hard work. They turn up every day and put their soul into it. It becomes who they are. They Chew the Bitter and get the rewards on the other side. 

It the same for artists, mathematicians or musicians. Jimi Hendrix wasn’t born playing a guitar (although that would have been cool) he had to learn and practice day after day. This with a bit of natural talent made him who he was. 

In my personal life I see the need to train as much as I can. Not only because it keeps me healthy and strong but because I love it! I love these arts, and I find the more that you dive into them, the more treasure you find. Every day is like walking along a beach, turning over a stone and finding a beautiful gem on the other side. It never seems to amaze me or stop evolving. So long as I keep practicing, it is always moving forward. 

It’s this that I try to bring into my classes and the way I teach. I’m constantly asking people how their training is going and telling people to ‘Keep Training’. 

I’m also acutely aware that for most of the people I teach, this is just a hobby or something they do to stay healthy, improve balance and help with injuries and pain. These are incredibly valid reasons to practice but I’ll always gently push people to train more, so that they will have the opportunity to find the gems too. 

I see it in classes all the time when people start to feel their bodies change. Their bodies start to link together, they feel the Deng (arch of the legs) and how it sends power through the trunk and into the hands for the first time, they notice how opening the lumbar region and pushing the tailbone down and forward, drives the feet into the ground and creates a root or any number of improvements and changes we go through in this study. It’s great the see that look in their eyes that says ‘Oh yeah, I understand, I feel it!’ 

But there should also be some time to play. Times when we can practice forms or other activities. The Monkey from Xing Yi Chuan always gets a smile. It’s mobile, fast, unpredictable, vicious, and intelligent but also cunning and playful too. I often find this can be a good thing to practice if we’ve just done a deep dive into something. It breaks the ice into play, but it will also absorb everything we’ve just been looking at before. 

So again, its balance. I try to teach as much as I think they can absorb while only practicing once or twice a week a week. For those that start to look deeper and begin to practice at home outside of class, you’ll see a far greater level of development. You can really see them change and evolve quickly. 

This is also the way I personally train too. I do the hard stuff that I know I need to do to keep me evolving quickly and in the right direction and I do the other things that is more like play. It must be enjoyable and constantly evolving. 

Keep training everyone!