Learning

Before we left London for the bliss of country living, John taught a 10 week course in Kentish Town. This was the first public teaching he had done for about 4 years. The classes were a great success, in my eyes, mainly because Mark was generous enough to drag his students along, all of whom were eager and excited to study with the great man. It gave us diehards the opportunity to meet and work with Hamid and James, Duncan and Alex, Ross and Anne, and all the others who swept through like a breath of fresh air. The master took us through simple Yang style postures, energy circuits and the beginnings of what we now know as heart energy - entering interaction. What struck me was just how much his energy and teaching had diverted from the Chinese approach, how open and vulnerable he was (not something you associate with a martial arts teacher), how much softer he was, but particularly how completely he was what he was, a strange energy being connected to a line peculiarly Irish, that is to say, of these isles and definitely not Chinese. This really struck home when he mentioned the Tiger's Mouth to me - the back of the fleshy webbing between thumb and index finger - a well-known energy point of Chinese medicine. This is the point we were struggling to connect with the other person's pushing hand as we yielded in single-hand pushing. I suggested that this point, being on the large intestine meridian, would be connected to the bowel whereas the middle of the palm was on the pericardium meridian, hence one pushes from the heart and yields from (or to) the gut. He listened with barely veiled impatience and then said, "Yes, I feel it as a deep pool above which a mist is rising." I was instantly bowled over by how much more vivid, lively and evocative his imagery was than mine and it immediately conjured pictures of Glendalough where St Kevin had lived. That simple statement of his had brought alive a soft seeping connecting energy and atmosphere that invaded every pore of my being, unlike the Chinese imagery of acupunture points and meridians which I now realise is intellectual and of little use to someone wanting to open up and connect to others.

The teaching is a complete package. That is to say, everything about it is important and vital, and it does not require padding out with extraneous 'teachings' from elsewhere, either from other teachers or from books. John has always said that if a student comes to him having already studied TaiChi with another teacher, then that student needs to drop everything they have learnt before they can take on board new instruction. This is what we call respect: the willingness and ability to drop your baggage whilst in the presence of the teacher so that the teaching has a place to reside within you. This is difficult to do and the first requirement is complete honesty with yourself and with the teacher. If there is anything not quite right about the teaching environment then no matter how hard the teacher tries and no matter how willing the student, the teaching just will not be able to express itself in a way that the student can grasp. The teaching resides in the teacher but it is the sincerity and honest need of the student that stimulates it to come out. I'm always amused when disgruntled former students grumble that my teacher never taught them anything, as if that was his fault. I've even been in classes where certain good students have stimulated my teacher to open up and teach and still the poor students cannot hear - somehow it didn't quite reach them. The good student is suspicious. Suspicious that the teaching may reside in any and every aspect of the teacher, even in the obnoxious parts of his character and personality. When you're with your teacher you have to operate from the simple premise that everything is important and everything is to be emulated. I'm also amused when people complain that I've just become a carbon copy of my teacher, spouting his words with little originality. For God's sake, I've immersed myself in his energy and teaching for the last 20 years, sacrificing career and family to do so: what do they expect? My main worry about maintaining this folly of a blog is that I'm either being heretical (too original) or giving too much away.