What Do Children Know?

That when they do T’ai Chi Chih their shoulders feel as if they have clouds that are moving around in a circle. That their hands and the bottoms of their feet get so hot. That when they first start, their feet feel as if they are walking on grass, but later, with a smile on their faces they report that now they feel as if they have pillows under each foot. The list goes on and on of how they FEEL when they do T’ai Chi Chih. For them T’ai Chi Chih isn’t a mental concept that must be dissected, as so often happens with adults, but rather an experience that begins to happen with the very first movement.

It truly was a joy to work with children again. It calls on all the resources that one understands about T’ai Chi Chih in order to be able to keep up with them, their grasp of the principles and their feeling of the Chi happens very quickly.

Working with a group of children of mixed ages led to interesting situations. From lack of coordination, short attention span, wiggling and giggling, all the way to wanting to be the teacher. The part that was the most interesting was to see how they started off desiring my attention and praise about how well they did the movements to later seeming not to be aware of that at all, but rather getting their confidence from their own interaction with the Chi.

Children live with words like hyper, stressed out, power, boring, and awesome. These words were not in normal everyday use even five years ago. But now they are a daily part, not only of their vocabulary, but also of their experience. So when they were asked what they had learned from doing T’ai Chi Chih some of the answers were “When you pop, the body gets relaxed, you aren’t so stressed out” (6 yr. old), “It stops you from being hyper” (7 yr. old), “When you are doing the movements very, very smoothly, clouds are tracing the body, it’s incredible, inside the body, in the bones, in the ears” (5 yr. old), “The power that made the body can heal the body.” (8 yr. old).

There are so many benefits that are experienced by both the teacher and the child during a T’ai Chi Chih class. Looking into their faces it was amazing to see the sincerity and simplicity with which they approached each movement and their eagerness to come each week. One little girl expressed what many of us hear so often as teachers, “I always feel so good after we finish.”

(This class was given at a cost of 25 cents per class, per student, the money was to be earned by helping their parents with extra chores around the house. The money was used at the end of class to have a pizza party. The children who participated belong to an after school program at a local Community Center funded by the City of Albuquerque, NM.)

Teaching children, at least once, is a great experience that I would recommend to all T’ai Chi Chih Teachers. Try it and Share the Chi.

– Carmen L. Brocklehurst