T’ai Chi Chih Practice with Adolescents

Why would anyone who’s generally so intimidated by teenagers that she wants to flee the area if more than two of them are present choose to teach T’ai Chi Chih movements to a troubled population of that group? A former student in one of my adult classes is a counselor at a drug/alcohol residential treatment center for Native American adolescents. Having experienced the many benefits of the practice for herself, she asked if I’d be interested in teaching the residents at the center. I agreed but with a certain amount of trepidation about the decision. After a time, the clinical psychologist there invited me to begin teaching once a week, with the understanding that the students would use Justin’s video several other times between my sessions in order to continue the practice. (Unfortunately, that never really happened in any consistent way.)

Some of the residents were court-ordered to the center; some came at the request of their families or for their own needs; others were sent by social service agencies. For some, it was the last chance before jail or prison. Besides having drug and alcohol problems, many had been in trouble with the law and came from very challenging home community circumstances. As a result, they brought with them any number of difficult-to-deal-with life issues.

Because I’ve had little experience teaching anything to teenagers and because I have no background in the addiction field, I was more than a little nervous the first few times I went to the class. However, I felt confident about my teaching ability in general and knew I related well to Native people, having lived and worked on a reservation for close to 30 years.

The T’ai Chi Chih class was required of all residents, and a counselor almost always participated, a big help to me, though it seemed a bit strained in that the residents were not really able to “be themselves” because the counselor had the power to give points (something of a demerit system where points add up to incur privileges being withheld) to those who didn’t participate, made negative comments, or engaged in other acting-out behavior. In general, though, even those who were obviously very uncomfortable, shy, and skeptical when beginning the class, were quite cooperative and at least tried to do the movements. Those who became sincerely interested (possibly as little as 15%) tended to keep their peers in line so the counselor hardly ever said or did anything overtly to control behavior.

Rarely did the same overall group attend the classes. Residents graduated from the program; new residents entered; sometimes participants were called out part-way through a session for counseling or a medical appointment. I soon realized I needed to accommodate students who had been taught perhaps half the movements alongside those who were there for the first time. I started going to the center early so I could work with new students for about 15 minutes before the others arrived in order to at least introduce them to the basic principles, demonstrate movements, and have them briefly try some of them. I came to appreciate Justin’s comment about the value of repetition being a mark of good teaching.

Because my perception of people at this age and in these circumstances is that they seem to have a fairly short attention span, I found I needed to be creative in the ways I structured the classes. The basic format I adopted during the hour-long sessions was, during the first part, to introduce and practice new movements or review movements previously introduced, sometimes focusing on significant points about the individual patterns; during the second part, participants sat while doing some activity related to T’ai Chi Chih practice; the third part was devoted to practicing, with music, some or all of the movements students knew. Activities during the middle part of the sessions included:

1) discussions based on questions that came up (most often not successful at all because the residents, in large part, did not care to discuss anything, partly, I feel, because the cultures they represent are quiet and possibly because of the presence of the counselor);

2) readings from the photo-textbook where I would explain, if necessary, some of what was presented;

3) hearing parts of “Justin Stone Speaks on T’ai Chi Chih,” including going over a written handout I gave to every new student which was a transcription from the tape where Justin discusses how alcohol addictions can be overcome with T’ai Chi Chih practice; (A sidelight: when questions did come up, the one most often asked was how this silly set of movements had anything to do with treatment. The handout from Justin’s tape gave real substance to T’ai Chi Chih being very directly related to the recovery process. Additionally, the psychologist who asked me to teach at the center is to be commended for his forward-seeing understanding and commitment about the place of these gentle movements in a treatment facility, the only Indian Health Service funded program, incidentally, that had ever used T’ai Chi Chih or any form of T’ai Chi or meditation as part of the program.)

4) watching sections of the PBS series video interviews between Justin and Carmen Brocklehurst where Justin discusses important principles about the T’ai Chi Chih form, again with my explanations if I felt they were needed;

5) learning the Great Circle Meditation, which most students seemed to enjoy;

6) drawing or writing responses to a question I posed, among the most successful activities I used.

To elaborate on activity #6, on one occasion I asked for ordinary questions, comments, or drawings about T’ai Chi Chih; another time, I asked what the residents experienced when they did the practice. The most fruitful device, though, became a kind of template for several activities. I used the instructions: “Choose one word or phrase. Draw or write what it means to you when you practice the T’ai Chi Chih movements.” No one was to put his/her name on the paper. I gave two or three choice selections; for example, softness, balance, circularity, connectedness, attention in soles of feet, etc. In the succeeding class, I read and described the drawings of what everyone had done, whether positive or negative. The honesty and sometimes deep reflection that came forth from these little papers was very gratifying to me and nearly the only feedback I received from participants. It appears there was a kind of safety in expression by anonymously writing or drawing instead of being required to verbally articulate what came up. Following is a sampling of responses:

• Drawing of figure with arms outstretched and arrows showing that arms are moving in a circle; second set of footprints below each foot (seemingly indicating motion); words “circular motion – to move with the flow; to guide your spirit.”

• “Ain’t feeling nothing but boredom and frustration because there’s no point to this whatsoever so please don’t teach us this any more ’cause no one likes it!”

• continuous flow – drawing of moving water with fish jumping & words “water/waves.”

• “flowing energy; helps relax me” + drawing of figure moving, one leg bent, other straight, arrows indicating circular flow of energy around figure.

• “It don’t have a feeling in me and I don’t care for the T’ai Chi [Chih] stuff.”

• balance – “T’ai Chi Chih seems to balance my inner self, to even out my feelings. It brings peace to my spirit.”

• “Softness means being soft with my inner self and my goodness.” + drawing of pillow.

I learned a tremendous amount while at the center. As I got used to working with adolescents and they got used to me, I began to enjoy my time there, instead of being a bit on edge and apprehensive as I was when I started. Always, though, it was the T’ai Chi Chih practice itself that continuously came to my aid. For example, at the beginning of a session when some of the students were restless, nervously giggly, or not too willing to participate, the simple act of doing the movements calmed everyone so that by the end of the session, even the most skeptical and restless could certainly feel the flow and serenity that existed in the room. An extension of this sense is that staff members commented to me that on the days the residents had T’ai Chi Chih class, their behavior was much more positive.

I found that I needed to keep the class going at a steady pace, not hurried, but full. If I allowed even a moment’s dead space, the attention was gone and I had difficulty getting it back. After I had been going to the center for several months, the entire staff often held meetings so that I sometimes had the students all by myself. At these times, there was a definite change from when a counselor was present. In a way, the atmosphere was more “real” in that the students knew because I had no authority over them, they could perhaps be more themselves. After the first time or two alone with them, I simply let the chi and the instruction control any negative behaviors, generally ignoring any rudeness or acting-out that occurred, a real test of my patience. That, along with peer pressure from those who sincerely wanted to learn, helped with the challenges of coming into a sometimes volatile situation once a week where I had no clue what incidents might have gone on just prior to my arrival or what would happen after my departure, to say nothing of the myriad events the residents experienced during the times between my classes, both positive and negative.

All in all, I feel very humble and honored to have been part of this program, to have learned that teenagers have as much to offer as anyone and that their protective shell in front of their peers can fall readily if handled gently, to feel, without any delusions, that a small seed was planted in all those who experienced the T’ai Chi Chih movements. That seed may grow and be nurtured into something wonderful for at least some of the residents who spent time at the center while the T’ai Chi Chih classes were going on.

The postscript is that, although my contract was to have been renewed, a new clinical psychologist is in charge, the center is applying for accreditation, and their focus is a bit different than it was while I taught there. It’s possible that in the future, the administration will again offer the T’ai Chi Chih form to its residents.