The Reluctant Tai Chi Teacher

Though I've been practicing Tai Chi for 13 years and teaching it for 6, I feel uncomfortable calling myself a master. My master was a colleague named Quyen Tran, who taught Tai Chi at the fitness center run by our employer. All of Master Tran's classes were well attended, and there were always a few beginners at every class. We would first to a warm up and then practice the 28-position, Yang short form together. Then he would break us into beginners and advanced students. An advanced student would be given the job to teach the beginners the form. The advanced students would practice mastering or going deeper into the subtleties of the form.

After several years of practicing, Mr. Tran one day told me to go to and practice with the advanced students. This was a bit surprising because I didn't feel I had mastered the form. I relied on whoever was teaching to call out the moves, to tell me when to breathe, when to raise or lower my arms, and when to shift my weight and step. I wasn't frustrated by not mastering the form. Practicing Tai Chi made me feel so good, it was enough to follow along. I loved the class so much and rarely missed a class over the years.

After several more years, my master said he would be retiring in a few years. By this time, there was a core of people who were the old-timers. Some had been practicing with Mr. Tran ever since he began teaching. These were the advanced students whom Mr. Tran would call on to teach the beginners. One day, all of the old-timers were absent, and when Mr. Tran broke the class into two, he pointed to me and said "You teach the beginners, today."

I was shocked. I didn't feel I had mastered the technique. For example, when trying to practice on my own, I could never remember all the moves and transitions between the positions. So I was very uncomfortable when I stood in front of my "flock" of new students and began to teach. I made some mistakes, sure but the students didn't notice. But I still didn't remember all the moves. During the next week, I watched a videotape of Master Tran performing the routine, and I took notes and made a cheat sheet. At the next class, he asked me to teach again. I made fewer mistakes and to my surprise I was able to get through the entire set with the students. I had learned the form!

Sometimes we do not know what we have within us. It takes someone to recognize it and call it forth. There is a wonderful Buddhist saying that goes, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." An article I once saw said, "be a good teacher or get out of the way." In Mr. Tran I found the perfect teacher--he appeared when I was ready (after practicing for many years and had demonstrated that I was serious), he brought out what was inside, and then he stepped out of the way by making me teach. Through teaching I learned the form even better, and every time I practice, I learn something new. Tai Chi has become a life-long learning event for me and that is why I still feel it is a work in progress.

Tai Chi: The Great Ultimate

As I stepped into the shower on this first morning after my marriage, the concept of Taiji, or Tai Chi, became clearer to me. The word, Tai Chi, consists of two linked Chinese characters. The first, means "great," and the second, means "ridge pole." In a tent, a ridegepole is the highest point and that which encompasses everything. According to scholars, this concept was created in Chinese philosophy to reconcile the central belief in Yin Yang, or the theory of opposites.

Yin Yang holds that opposites forces--such as hot/cold, male/female, up/down, light/dark, etc.--are interdependent, the one giving rise to, or contained in, each other. For example, a tiny grain of wheat, when sown, will grow into a tall shaft of when. Then it dies, releasing its seeds, which begin the cycle of life again. The seed holds both increase and decrease within.

When we practice Tai Chi Chuan, we try to incorporate concepts like heavy/light and up/down in our movements. While we are breathing in, our hands are light and floating upward, while the knees are lowering and feeling heavy. With our bodies, we are trying to be the ridgepole that serves as a bridge between the energy coming up from the earth and the that coming down from the universe and the sky.

This energy is also called "chi" or "qi," but it is not the same as "ji" which is found to "taiji" or "tai chi." Chi or qi is vital life force, which is analagous to prana in the yoga tradition or "elan vital," in French.

When we are in harmony, we have a balance between the yin yang and the qi is flowing between the opposites.

At the end of our civil marriage ceremony yesterday, the judge recited the following Apache blessing:

Apache Wedding Prayer

Now you will feel no rain-for each of you will be shelter to the other.

Now you will feel no cold-for each of you will be warmth to the other.

Now there will be no loneliness for you.

Now you are two persons-there is only one life before you.

Go now to your dwelling place to enter into the days of your togetherness.

And may your days be good and long together.

The latest addition to the pairs of yin yang opposites of Hot/Cold, Up/Down, Light/Dark, Sweet/Sour is the pair Laura/Kurt.

Big, cottony snowflakes are falling. The kind that stick to your eyelashes.

The first heavy snow of the year falls in Washington, DC, and for the first time in my life, it doesn't make me melancholy. It reminds me of a haiku by Basho:

"First snowfall: the travelling monk's faded backpack."

You see, since boyhood, I hated the fall. Sure in Indiana where I grew up, we looked forward to the brilliant sulfur-yellow and flaming red maple trees. But for me it always meant returning to school and the fear of not being smart enough. Odd, that feeling despite going on to have a good life compared to billions of other inhabitants of this planet: I did well in college and a scholarship took me abroad. There I met my wife, returned home, married, got a good job and raised a family. Still the dread arose annually as my daughters grew up, and eventually left for college. Then came the hardest period: nearly losing both daughters, separation, loss of a parent, and divorce.

Taoism has a central idea that all dualities are interdependent.

"Any action would have some negative (yin) and some positive (yang) aspect to it. Taoists believe that nature is a continual balance between yin and yang, and that any attempt to go toward one extreme or the other will be ineffective, self-defeating, and short-lived." (Jeff Rasmussen, PhD, author of Spirit of Tao Te Ching)

The monk's faded backpack of Basho's haiku bears witness to the struggles of his life. The snow throws the scene into relief, its beauty a counterpoint to the threadbare sack.

As I said, this year is different. Today I see the snowfall leaving the ground covered with a white blanket that purifies, quiets the mind and makes everything beautiful again. The hard events of my life balanced the good things and now make me cherish them even more.