It’s Never too Late… to Teach Your First Class

Justin’s words rang in my ears for 18 months after I completed the teacher accreditation course in June 1999: “It’s best to get started teaching right away, even if it is only a small friendly class given in your house. You will know later, dear, that I am right.” What was he seeing that I couldn’t see? (Well, lots, of course. But that’s another story.) Was my first class going to be filled with intellectual smart-allecks from Cambridge and Harvard? Were they going to chew me up and spit me out? As the months wore on, fear crept in like morning fog. Still, Justin’s words weren’t enough to motivate me. No, it took a trip to the other side of the globe to get me to teach my first class.

When I returned from a long trip to Australia and New Zealand in December 2000, and friends asked me to single out the highlight of the trip, they were surprised by my response. But I wasn’t and Justin certainly wasn’t. I taught my first T’ai Chi Chih class 20,000 miles from home and it couldn’t have worked out more perfectly or naturally. It was even more satisfying than walking on glaciers, watching the world’s smallest and rarest penguin colonies, observing even more rare albatrosses, hiking in the wilderness, and generally being awestruck by Nature every waking moment.

This is how it came about: I attended a conference for Lonely Planet travel guide authors and mentioned it to a group of fellow writers that I was an accredited TCC teacher and that I practiced every morning. I suggested that if they wanted to join me, I’d be happy to teach them. To my delight, all of them showed up. Why? I had hooked them in by talking about my own experience: I told them that while working on my most recent book, I had done TCC daily, sometimes twice daily, during the long researching and writing process. I shared my conclusion that my new-found focus and ease during the writing process could only be attributed to an increased flow of chi. I explained that hordes of perfectly turned phrases had tumbled through my fingers. Adjectives and adverbs I hadn’t used in years popped into my head at just the right moment. It was an easy sell to other writers who often struggle with their work.

The eight-day class went exceedingly well and I never had to confess to them that they were my first students. (I had been afraid to be exposed as a novice.) Word quickly circulated among the 300 Lonely Planet employees that this world-wide group of authors was different from the rest. Authors invited to this annual conference are usually rebellious by day and inebriated by night. Not us. Our merry band was waking at the crack of dawn to do something good for ourselves. By the end of the conference, plenty of employees were clamoring for what the authors were clearly enjoying. TCC had been introduced to the Australian continent!

Upon my return, I decided to take an unusual approach to organizing classes since I travel frequently. When someone asks for a class, I decided to respond, “If you wouldn’t mind getting another seven or eight people together and finding a place and setting a time, I’d be thrilled to teach.”

A class of 22, organized by my mother, got started that way in March. Another friend organized a class of ten. Then lo and behold, a health club facility in the metro Boston area called and asked if we (Lisa Otero, the only other TCC teacher in Boston, and I) would like to teach at their 30 clubs. They had found us on the web site and were particularly impressed by the accreditation process.

My presentation to the fitness directors was a study in pranja — just the right descriptions popped out of my mouth at just the right moments. But I wouldn’t have had the confidence to do that before my other experiences.

Perhaps I waited so long to start teaching because I knew that once started, the teaching would take off. And it has. Now is the right time. The fear, of course, has since burned off like morning fog inevitably does. The trick was trusting that it would and having the patience. The confidence has grown by leaps and bounds. I’m ready for whatever unknown Justin was referring to when he said “You will know later, dear, that I am right.” Justin has recently written that “What meets the eye is not what meets the heart.” My heart says bring it on; I’m ready, willing, and grateful.