That phrase is near the top of the list of things I remember my mother saying to me. I didn’t much enjoy hearing those words, because they were always uttered right after I’d made a mistake. But she was genuinely interested in helping me learn from my mistakes, so she didn’t go into too much detail on what lesson I was supposed to learn after the mistake, big or small. In fact, when my mistakes were big and painful, she sometimes didn’t say anything at all.
Sometimes I probed for more information on the details of the lesson I was supposed to learn. In that case, she would say something that baffled me then, but makes me laugh now: “If you don’t know, then I can’t tell you.” I thought about that yesterday when removing one of my husband’s T-shirts from the clothes dryer. It has a cartoon of the Peanuts character Snoopy in his “Joe Cool” outfit. Under the image appears the following sentence: “If you have to ask, you’ll never know.”
My mother felt that it was up to me to figure out life’s mysteries on my own. I’m still foggy on a lot of them, but as a child, it was nice to be treated as if I had a functioning mind and powers of discernment, even when they weren’t working perfectly.
I try to walk that road with my t’ai chi students as well. Learning this powerful and beautiful “moving meditation” can be frustrating, and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t run into physical and mental roadblocks along the way.
For me, a roadblock has to be gotten around, not through. The head-on energy of “I can’t” is insurmountable. Fortunately, there are a number of alternate routes.
One of the most gratifying events for me as a teacher is to recognize and support students’ processes of working through a challenge. We work as a team to share our collective physical and experiential toolboxes. Sometimes the solution appears fairly quickly, other times it comes from an unexpected source. Often, it comes from my own mistakes, made publicly and conspicuously in front of a group of students.
When I first started teaching, the thought of making a mistake was mortifying. It would be embarrassing and would reflect on my ability and credibility as a teacher. But over time, I learned not to fret over the inevitable mistakes. Mistakes are my friends…because they sometimes evolve into so-called “teachable moments” for myself and for others.
In one group that I taught for about five years, I went through a stage of repeatedly forgetting one particular sequence. So I made a standing offer of free lemonade for the next class session if any student caught me skipping that sequence. It was a hot summer and the studio wasn’t air conditioned, so we all appreciated the lemonade on several occasions. This also turned out to be good practice for paying close attention to the sequencing while still smoothly performing each movement.
When a group is large, it’s not always possible or comfortable to correct or adjust individuals’ movements. For that reason, if I see something that needs attention, I often will demonstrate the error myself, then show the movement done correctly. That way, everyone gets the benefit of the individual adjustment, and if that individual is perceptive, they’ll pick up the hint.
If not, there’s always another day. Most tai chi practitioners, myself included, have certain innate habits of the body that keep trying to come out. For me, it’s the tendency to lower my gaze when I’m concentrating too hard. Some people tend to lock their joints when they feel challenged. Others struggle with a particular movement. Practice and repetition is the antidote for unwanted habits.
On the issue of getting around obstacles, sometimes I’ve made adjustments and alterations to the movements in order to work through challenges. This is particularly good to remember with one’s foot positions. Once the specific positions for the sequences are learned—the four cardinal directions and the four diagonal directions—an experienced practitioner has the option to make minor adjustments for his or her personal comfort. By making those choices, practitioners make the t’ai chi their own; within the template of lineage, of course.
Another helpful tool in the toolbox is metaphor. Beginning t’ai chi students are often encountering a new way of learning; the sequences fall in a particular order, but the body learns by absorbing the movements over a period of time. The mind sometimes tries to be the boss of this process, which is problematic. When I first learned the form, it occurred to me that the learning process wasn’t linear. It felt as if I was in a darkroom, developing a print. One starts with a blank page and the image gradually emerges. Resting in that metaphor made the learning process more relaxed. It didn’t allow me to suddenly become proficient, mind you – but it was a way to distance my workaday brain a little bit, and give space to the intuition, imagination and metaphorical landscape. That was a very relaxing and freeing experience – “letting it be a lesson to me.”
