01/09/2026
❤️❤️❤️☯️
WORDLESS TEACHING IN TAIJIQUAN
My Taijiquan teacher explains more than most teachers I’ve met. Still, the teaching method is heavily based on repetition rather than a minute detailing of every movement. I'm not fond of this method. It leaves people to imitate without necessarily understanding the content of the form.
The lofty explanation is that this is akin to Laozi's "wordless teaching." One learns by silent participation and not by language. Some traditionalists might even assert that language can never achieve a bodily and energetic transformation.
Teachers who follow this approach believe that self-discovery is the best form of learning. This approach ends up testing the students' determination and intelligence. Only dedicated people are going to stick to this method.
The old masters declare that they don't care if someone leaves. They say it means that the student didn't deserve to inherit the great legacy of martial arts. The unfortunate byproduct of this attitude is that most people quit, and many styles are now extinct.
Recently, I was turning this attitude over in my mind as the class drilled a single posture while circling the entire perimeter of the training hall. I thought how this method depends on being immersed in an intact system and community. In that context, a person isn’t just learning a skill. They’re taking part in the same traditions that bond the community together.
For example, when my teacher's father wanted to learn Taijiquan in Beijing decades ago, he went to a neighborhood temple whose head monk happened to be a world-class master. That was once possible in Beijing, and in a community like San Francisco's Chinatown, too. Back then, the martial art master was a member of the community like any other professional, and the entire community culture was congruent with the teaching. You didn't have to be told much because everything was consistent with the teaching.
I was once on a crowded subway in Hong Kong. It was standing room only. When the train lurched as it started, a schoolgirl slipped. Her classmate chided her for having a bad horse stance. I don't think the teens practiced martial arts. It's that martial arts was part of the community vocabulary.
When I looked at the repetition style of teaching from the perspective of martial arts as cultural touchstones, I thought of someone trying to learn a new route to get somewhere in town. It doesn't matter if people minutely explain how to walk, where to turn, what every storefront you'll pass might be. You have to get a general idea, and then you become familiar after walking the route many times. Maybe that's the reason that Chinese martial arts is taught the way it is. You aren’t learning a routine. You’re traveling in the same community and culture into which you were born.
Sadly, that world is fading. Or maybe we just need to work through this until our modern world returns to that same wholeness.
