On Learning Tai Chi and Teaching Art
Around March or April this year, I heard that Master Zhao Youbin would be coming to Sydney in May to teach the Yang-style 85-form Tai Chi. At the time, my only formal training had been in the Yang-style Eight-Movement Circular Form with Emily at Western Sydney University. I had also practised the traditional 28 and 37 forms with Jon in the park, although I had learnt most of the movements from instructional videos. Wanting to attend Master Zhao's course, I familiarised myself with the 85 form through YouTube and joined the YangZhao Taiji Association.
Through the association, I had the opportunity to join the Sunday Tai Chi practice at Parramatta Square. Sam gave me some pointers at my very first session. I remember reaching Single Whip when he came over and told me to extend my arm and release the stiffness in my elbow. He also told me that, although many of my movements were not yet correct, my "frame was very clean", and encouraged me to keep practising.
At the end of July, Sam invited me to join his class. Having learnt the 85 form largely on my own, I had something to correct in almost every movement, so I valued the opportunity enormously. For the next two months, I was occupied with moving house and setting up my studio and had very little time to practise, but I hardly missed a class. When I couldn't practise properly, I would turn his corrections over in my mind while doing other things. I would even catch myself making Tai Chi movements while cooking, trying to work out what he had meant. On the occasions when he corrected several things in one class, I felt I had come away with treasure.
Sam, however, did not correct me every time. He once said to me,, "You're very talented. You don't need to deliberately change your form. As long as you're willing to learn and practise consistently, it will come naturally." He also devoted a considerable amount of class time to simple qigong and body exercises that gradually loosened and opened the body. I understood their importance, but I still found myself wishing he would spend more time teaching the form and correcting my movements.
The last correction Sam gave me before returning to China for a holiday came indirectly, while he was teaching another student. He said, "Faye does this movement quite well, but she does it a little too much. I don't have a problem with that, though. " My immediate reaction was: Why didn't you tell me earlier? I hadn't even realised I was overdoing it. If I had known, surely I could simply have toned it down.
After Sam left, I began reminding myself whenever I practised not to do too much. But over time, I started to understand why he had left it alone. During those two months, I had been trying to undo some of the habits I had acquired through learning without a teacher. I became meticulous about each movement, making sure my hands and legs were in the right positions and at the right height. In doing so, I had become so preoccupied with individual movements that I was losing the sense of Tai Chi as an integrated whole. At the same time, I could see the openness and expansiveness of my teachers' movements, but not yet what made those movements possible from within. When the outward form is deliberately imitated without an understanding of what produces it, it can easily become a kind of posing. This, I suspect, was where my tendency to "do too much" had come from.
In fact, Sam had already alluded to this quality in my Tai Chi; he simply had not defined it as a problem that needed correcting. His earlier comment had been, "Your Tai Chi is very expressive." Looking back, had he told me then that I needed to be more natural and more relaxed, I would probably have added "natural" and "relaxed" to my growing list of instructions and tried even harder to achieve them. I might simply have ended up performing naturalness and relaxation. More importantly, I may have denied myself a stage in which I needed to go a little too far in order to establish the form in my body. I also suspect that he did not want too much evaluation, too early, to undermine my confidence in practising.
It made me think about what a teacher actually knows. A teacher knows what good Tai Chi is because they have already travelled much further along that path. But knowing what is right and knowing when a student is in a position to benefit from that knowledge are not the same thing. Sometimes a teacher's expertise lies in restraint: in recognising which detours a student needs to make for themselves, where they are in their learning, when to intervene, and what kind of intervention will actually help at that particular point.
It occurred to me that art education is not so different. Children's thinking, perception and hand–eye coordination are still developing. If we impose the "correct" way too early, a child may become uncertain and reluctant even to begin. Or they may attempt to imitate something they do not yet have the capacity to understand or execute, becoming increasingly frustrated the harder they try to get it "right", until their interest in drawing gradually disappears. Another possibility is that, with sufficient "training", they learn to produce work that looks accomplished, but in the process become so concerned with outward correctness that their own experience and expression have little room to develop. This is visible in some art schools, where the work displayed in the window can be technically mature yet dominated by technique and craftsmanship. There is a parallel in Tai Chi: a posture may be beautiful, but if it lacks an internal pathway of force and whole-body integration, it can remain at the level of external form — Tai Chi as exercise rather than Tai Chi as an internal practice.
In some art schools, too, children's work largely reproduces the teacher's own work or stylistic language, leaving very little of the child visible. Yet what is genuinely one's own — including a personal style — cannot be produced simply through imitation or conscious manufacture. It takes shape gradually over time. The body, experience, temperament, aesthetic sensibility and way of seeing the world all enter into it. Children taught by the same teacher should therefore not arrive at the same work. Tai Chi is much the same. Beyond a certain point, a student cannot continue to reproduce the teacher one-to-one. Bodies differ; so do temperament, life experience and understanding of the art. Age and physical condition matter as well. Eventually, the form acquires the qualities of the person practising it. What emerges in Tai Chi is this person's Tai Chi; what emerges through art should, in the end, be the person.
For this reason, whether in Tai Chi or art, learning should not be measured simply by who progresses fastest, learns the greatest number of forms, performs first, or produces impressive work earliest. A good teacher sees beyond immediate results and makes decisions according to what will serve the student in the longer term.
But how a teacher teaches is also inseparable from what students and parents understand education to be. Immediate results are, naturally, easier to see. To a Tai Chi student, a teacher who can teach more forms in less time may appear to offer better value. To the parent of a child learning art, a teacher who can quickly produce technically impressive results through the child may appear more capable. If the market recognises only what can be demonstrated quickly and visibly, even a thoughtful educational approach can struggle to survive. This is one reason I continue to write for parents alongside running my studio.
A friend once told me that my writing was too theoretical and that I should make it more accessible to the market. But given my time and capacity, I can only teach a small number of children anyway. I do not need every parent to agree with my approach. I would rather articulate clearly what I believe, so that parents who share this understanding of education can find me. At the same time, I hope that what I write might prompt more parents to ask what, ultimately, we want children to gain from art education.
In the longer term, if the opportunity arises, I would also like to see these questions discussed more widely in educational research and practice. Change does not come from one place alone. Some of it comes through research and educational systems; some through teachers, parents and individual classrooms. For now, I can only begin with what is within my reach: to continue practising, in my own work, the kind of education I believe in.
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