Teaching Tai Chi with Rhythm and Not Language

It's a funny thing. Teaching weapons can either excite or alienate students. But the physical handling of some external tool can enable a sense of rhythm otherwise unreachable with empty hand systems. It's worth giving students the chance to find this out at the earliest possibility.
But watch out for language. Trying to describe the benefits, applications and practical uses of weapons training can often backfire. Teachers end up engraving their views on the class rather than exploring and discovering. After all, the art that can be described, is not the art.

The Art in Martial

The Art in Martial Arts - lets remember -  is not necessarily literal. Trying to explain a Picasso or Seurat may satisfy some of the wordsmiths amongst you, but for others it may remove the passion, the texture, the subjectivity and beauty.

Words carry more than definiton. They are weighty tools to employ with an agenda engrained in culture. It is worth bearing in mind. Words are not neutral. They carry cultural and temporal meanings: Particularly if you insist on using Mandarin in class, wearing shiny clothes from another culture and selling bean curd to a class hungry for simple icons.

So forget the past. Be inspired by it, but then let it go. It's how we evolve. 

So What of Tai Chi? How Then Do we Evolve? 

Do we trace back the origins of Tai Chi history in order to replicate it's original purpose and training methods - an arguable end in itself some say - or do we track it's migratory movements, it's skips and bounds, it's trips and stumbles and see where it leads us?

It's an important question.  

For if we step back, apply a little vision and insight, something new may still arise. Something that speaks the language of a new era, something that speaks with another language than words.
And so we return to the use of weapons. An extension of ourselves. A step away from the ego-centric practices that surround the "art".
 
My health, my form, my skills, my beliefs, my traditions, my school, my lineage, my, my my....
Extend outwards and let go of yourself. Swing and flow, said Cheng Man Ching. And in so doing, watch and follow. 
In the exercise in the video above  -  we do no more than just that. Move and watch. Open a dialogue and see where it leads. Only we use not words, but spirals of movements, breath and the conversation of dance. 

Ways of Learning

more info

Ways of Learning is all about promoting these ideas: the chapter on rhythm that you can find in the book, now has an accompanying video. The first in a new series. Enjoy the video.

For more explanations and exercises, see the accompanying book here or the audiobook here - Ways of Learning: A manifesto for change.

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