Immersion Effects On Beginners

I will share my experience of teaching all 19 T’ai Chi Chih movements to a beginning level class in six days in December. At the end of the last class, I handed out a three-question survey form, which asked: 1.) What one thing did you learn about TCC; 2.) Did TCC bring benefit to any aspect of your life (physical, mental, emotional); 3.) Would you have preferred a traditional, once-a-week, eight-week class?

Taking a TCC class for two-hours, six days in a row is a very intense experience, and the first few days brought sore muscles to the students as well as vivid dreams to many. The class included two teenage girls, one woman in her 20s, another in her 30s, and a couple in their 50s. One of the girls suffered from a variety of physical and emotional imbalances, and she had the most difficulty with the coordination required in TCC practice.

One of the biggest benefits to giving a consecutive six-day class is that the student does not have the opportunity to forget the movements since they come back the very next day to practice with an instructor. The entire class grasped the basics for the four Pulling Taffy movements in the first lesson, and the girls pronounced them their favorites. I have never seen this happen before, and I was elated. The downside of the format is that the instructor must make an extraordinary effort to ground the class since they are moving so much Chi for such a long time. I forever reminded them to “keep the mind in the soles of the feet” and explained the reason many times.

The survey results astounded me. They all said they preferred the six-day experience to an eight-week class. Their responses about benefits were unanimously positive: “I learned to center myself in the soles of my feet, and I already notice a great change in my mood and lowered stress.” One of the teenagers said, “It brought me emotional centeredness and helped physically with my tennis.” I deem the experiment a success and would offer the format again, but only during a holiday break when I was not working since it requires the teacher’s full energetic concentration to ground the Beginner’s Mind.