The Tai Chi Teacher
 

By Dr. Paul Lam

This is an extract from Dr. Lam’s latest book, “Teaching Tai Chi Effectively”

Why do so many of us teach tai chi? What are the rewards for us? What skills do we need to be a teacher? How do we know that we are teaching effectively?

I always wanted to be a teacher. It’s in my blood. My late father was a great teacher and even though I practise medicine, I don’t just treat people; I also teach. I train new doctors before they go out on their own and I teach medical and health science students, doctors, physiotherapists and other health professionals, as well as people from many other walks of life. And, of course,

I teach tai chi. I teach tai chi to people at all levels, from beginners to international competitors. I love teaching and enjoy learning how to do it better.

There are hundreds of good tai chi books available today, but so far, none on teaching it.   Yet, for tai chi to grow and progress, teaching is the most important factor.  For years, I have been training teachers to run my Tai Chi for Health programs. In my workshops, I have incorporated structured teaching sessions to enable effective learning. Many teachers have told me how useful they found them. After learning it from one of my workshops, Evelyn, a physiotherapist from Switzerland, started teaching my Tai Chi for Arthritis programs. Soon she was running several classes and had a waiting list of students, while more experienced tai chi teachers running classes nearby had problems attracting enough students. Many instructors of my programs have told me of similar experiences. I want to share these effective methods with more tai chi teachers so that together we can reach and help more people. Tai chi teachers are not competing in a limited market. If we have more effective teachers it will simply bring more students to all of us and, what is more, it will introduce more people to tai chi and a healthier and happier life.

Realising that the progress of our society depends on knowledge being passed down from teacher to student, I’ve gradually increased the amount of time I spend teaching. For me, the journey to be a more effective teacher has been challenging, even frustrating at times, but in the end, immensely rewarding. I really enjoy discovering new ways to improve my teaching skills. I have discovered also that teaching tai chi improves my tai chi skills as well as my inter-personal skills.

It wasn’t always this way, though. The traditionalists placed heavy emphasis on tai chi skills in teaching tai chi. According to tai chi tradition, a student had to be in training full time for many years in order to reach a level high enough to become a teacher. Actually, most of the traditionalists didn’t even consider teaching as a skill in itself.

When I started teaching, I’d received no instruction from my own teachers on how to teach.  I simply began by following their methods of teaching. In those early years I was particularly focused on picking up students’ mistakes. I’d stand on the stage and ask the students to practise in a group. Then, starting with the more talented students, I’d pick up on many of their mistakes, mimicking them one by one, pointing out who did this and who did that, and telling them how it should be done. The more talented a student was, the more I picked on them, because I thought they had the most potential for growth. Praise was a rare commodity: I was too busy looking for mistakes.

People used to tell me how incredible it was that I was able to remember so many points at one time. I took that as positive feedback. In retrospect, it is a surprise that any of those students still stayed with me — that some did is probably because, despite my poor teaching, they knew that my passion for tai chi and respect for them was genuine. As I improved my teaching skills, I noticed that more students were coming back, were learning more quickly and, most importantly, were enjoying their tai chi more. And just as importantly, I am enjoying teaching more too.

Dr Paul Lam, a practising physician and tai chi master  with over 30 years experience, is a world leader in the field of tai chi for health improvement. He is one of the most experienced tai chi  teachers.

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