Conversation with a Beginner
Taiji Student: "Well, I just want to learn the forms and get the health from them at this point. When I start getting more comfortable with what I'm doing maybe I'll want to go a little deeper and learn the fighting stuff. I really don't need it though if I ever get attacked, the adrenaline would kick in and I'd revert back to my old barroom brawling days"
Taiji Instructor: "Barroom brawling, eh? What kinda stuff did that involve?
Taiji Student: "Oh, lots of stuff, you know, devious, sneaky, dirty."
Taiji Instructor: "O.K. Let's continue on with form"
THE LESSON CONTINUES, THEN ENDS
Taiji Instructor: "So I'd like to hear a little more about this barroom brawling you were talking about."
Taiji Student: "Well, you know things like hitting a guy in the throat or using lots of elbows or jabbin' a guy in the eyes . . . you know real life, violent stuff."
Taiji Instructor: "It's interesting that you would say that because probably eighty percent of all the strikes in Taiji target the neck in some form or another . . . Taiji is considered a death art and is really violent. Something else that's quite interesting is that there are not alot of other systems that teach this type of stuff . .
Taiji Student: ". . . That's because they aren't interested in hurting other people and that's why they aren't really realistic."
The above conversation is taken from an actual conversation that I had with one fo my beginning Taijiquan students. The conversation continued on in a discussion of what real fighting is and what men and women are capable of doing and into a sharing of war stories. What I realized as an instructor though, is that this "beginner" is actually much farther along in his training than some "advanced" students. He is already following the "path" of Taijiquan.
We say that to learn about healing one must first learn the violence of Taijiquan. Well, my student already knows about violence, he knows how to fight and how to hurt someone, after spending many years as a very small, bartender having to handle much larger, violent men he knows how to fight, I probably could teach him very little accept how to formalize what he already knows. He's gone past that, he knows about violence and now he wants to know about healing, health, balance, and well-being. These are the highest levels of Taijiquan training but we can only get there through learning about the violence that is Taijiquan. His heart and spirit are ready to receive things that many advanced student would have trouble understanding. When I thought about this and then looked at the amazing progress this particular student has made in only two weeks time I believe that my theory is validated.
Email: loki@ris.net
