Over the last few weeks, I have sat down with five different Tai Chi/Qigong teachers to talk about how we transmit our art. How we communicate with our students. Not what we teach, but how we teach.
Some work out of church halls, guarding their weekly slot like a sacred ritual. Others have wandered off into gyms, activity and health centres, mixing with fitness instructors, physios, and people who’ve never heard of lineage and don’t care to.
Each teacher spoke with great honesty and thoughtfulness about their approach to teaching. About why people come… and why they quietly stop coming.
What follows isn’t a transcription of those conversations. Rather an attempt to collate those ideas, to explore the variations from each, and to find what links us all.
At some point, we will all sit down together. For now, this is the opening move.
Who says you can teach?
Spend five minutes with any Tai Chi teacher and the conversation slides, almost automatically, into forms, lineage, and stories about who trained with who in what courtyard in 1973. But underneath all of that is a question most people try not to ask too loudly: Who gave you permission to teach?
Students rarely ask about styles let alone lineage, but teachers ask each other all the time, sometimes politely, sometimes with a certificate already halfway out of the bag. We ask as if there was some central authority. Some venerated grandmaster handing down permission, rather than a loose scattering of organisations, each validating their own system, their own standards.
You can join one. Or several. Or none.
Which leads to an awkward truth: A lot of teaching is self-declared. And yet, people still turn up.
The qualification illusion
There’s a quiet belief that if we gather enough certificates, acronyms, endorsements, and approval from the right names, we’ll eventually become a “proper” teacher. But, as we have already noted, most students never ask to see any of it. Not because they’re careless. Not because they don’t value such things. It’s because they have their own much simpler test:
“Does this help me?”
A beautifully performed form is not evidence of teaching ability. It’s evidence of performance. And performance, however impressive, is often a way of avoiding the harder job… which is getting someone else to improve.
That’s the bottom line. And as teachers we don’t always focus on this. We are caught up demonstrating… repeatedly… to an audience that slowly gets better at watching. It’s a bad habit that arises, in part, from the complexity of each class.
The class full of contradictions
- There’s the beginner who’s wandered in out of curiosity.
- The collector of forms, always ready for the next move.
- People who just want to unwind and don’t intend to get any better.
- And the one who’s really here for the coffee afterwards.
- And a few who are already eyeing up the teaching slot.
And somehow, we’re expected to serve all of them equally. Most of us deal with this by delivering the same content, to everyone, with the hope that each person finds something in it.
But teaching isn’t content delivery. When expectations are not met, people leave.
Why people leave
It’s comforting to say people leave because life gets in the way. And sometimes that’s true. But it’s also a useful excuse. People leave because:
- We’re unclear
- We hide behind certainty
- We repeat ourself
- We perform instead of teach
- We never really see them
And sometimes… because nothing is happening. Not outwardly. Not inwardly. Just a weekly ritual of going through the motions.
Tai Chi does survive under these conditions. Students satisfaction doesn’t.
Step out of the classroom
Step into a gym or a health centre and most of this story disappears. No one asks about our lineage. No one cares who our teacher was. There’s no polite nodding when jargon is served up. There’s just a simple, silent judgement:
“Is this worth my time?”
If it works, they stay. If it doesn’t, they don’t. In part this has to do with confidence, and how we project ourselves. Yes, Certificates and Grand Masters patting us on the back can prop up this confidence, but this doesn't necessarily translate into teaching skills.
The doubt no one gets rid of
“Am I actually qualified to be doing this?” Even experienced teachers admit it, if you catch them off guard. The answer is not found in a certificate from the Institute of Internal Studies and Advanced Nonsense or from the Council of inner Wisdom. It never was. It’s found in how we behave while teaching.
- Sometimes we’re the sage on the stage. We demonstrate, explain, correct. This is necessary. Especially at the start of someones journey. But when we stay there too long, we create dependency. Students learn to follow… not to feel.
- Sometimes we become the guide at the side. We step back, let them explore, ask questions instead of giving answers. But lean too far and the whole thing dissolves into vague movement and personal interpretation dressed up as progress.
- And sometimes we’re the meddler in the middle. We interrupt. We provoke. We nudge someone off balance and watch what they do next. We don’t explain relaxation. We shrink the comfort zone.
Most teachers say they do all three. But then again, most teachers are not the best judge of the things they say.
When nothing is happening
If you have taught the same class for a while - and most of us have - there will be times when the energy drops. People are still moving. The sequence is still being followed. But nothing is really happening. No shift in awareness. No discomfort. No discovery. Just movement within a comfy cushioned zone.
It looks like teaching. It feels like progress. But it isn’t. And unless something interrupts it, it can go on for years.
The instinct, when things aren’t working, is to add more. More explanations. More corrections. More details. But often the opposite is needed. Less control. Fewer instructions. More space for something unpredictable to happen. A suggestion instead of a command. An image instead of a correction. A moment where the student has to find something for themselves.
So what makes a teacher?
The one thing that emerged from all the conversations was that focussing on content might support good teaching. But it doesn’t create it.
A class is something more than a recital. A good teacher is someone who can enter a class without an agenda, a curriculum a “next step” and patiently wait to see what’s actually happening. Giving time for the class to breathe before filling it up with the stuff they brought along.
A good teacher can respond… in real time. Not perfectly. Not coherently, But honestly.
So, am I allowed to teach?
You can collect evidence, validation, approval. You can take that workshop from The Order of the Dragon Spirit and pin it to your wall. Or you can ask something far less comfortable:
“Is anything I’m doing actually changing anyone?”
If the answer is no… then it's all just decoration.
If the answer is yes… then you probably don’t need permission.
Final note
Thanks to those who have contributed so far to this debate. Want to join in the discussion? There’s a survey below. Add your voice.
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