Teaching ourselves through teaching others
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Embrace Tiger, Return to Mountain
As you all know, Black Bamboo employs a teaching style common to many martial arts: seniors teach juniors. Often this helps the seniors more than the juniors because when we are forced to explain what we are doing to someone, we understand it better ourselves. We’re also come face to face with our own failures; therefore we begin to rework our form - fixing deficiencies we’ve have discovered!!!
I have been working my way through LaoMa’s library of taiji books that were left to the school and have been reminded that this is true for ALL levels of teachers! We’re all junior students to our art form - needing to refocus and learn a new level.
As we all progress, I wanted to share this observation that Al Chung-liang Huang makes at the end of his book “Embrace Tiger, Return to Mountain”.
Suzanne reflects my day-to-day inconsistencies: “You must not have been as centered as you think your are.” “Your teaching certainly hasn’t affected you.” The ego-me becomes furious: the real me accepts. What one knows and can say to others often has little to do with what one really is. As I proof-read the final draft of the manuscript, I begin learning t’ai-chi all over again. I get excited about the ideas and become involved with the practice, forgetting that I actually said it, did it and knew it , once. Wisdom is. It is not mine or yours to keep. Recognizing it intellectually is only the beginnings of learn. The great learning happens with the experience that fulfills and renews as life moves on.
As I remember our teacher, LaoMa, and reflect on my own teaching and practice, I hope that I can rise to the humility and excitement that teaching, learning and sharing brings to us all.
“Wisdom is. “ May we all share it freely.
-Huang, All Chung-liang. Embrace Tiger, Return to Mountain. Moab , Utah, Real People Press, 1973.