The hardest thing about learning the form in the beginning is not the difficulty in remembering the movements. Finding twenty minutes for yourself during the day to practice alone-that can feel like the hardest thing in the world.
There are many reasons why it is so difficult. A big one is that we are tought to value everyone and everything else except ourselves. We feel we should be doing something for our family, our company, or society. Taking time for ourselves only makes us feel guilty. Or we think that to take time for ourselves is to waste time. Either way we are trapped in a cycle that puts everything and everyone else first.
Developing the routine of practicing alone in class helps to work with this issue. It is one of the reasons why, after I teach a new move, I always ask my students to practice it individually for ten minutes. Then I leave the room. Leaving them alone is the only way I know to encourage them to trust themselves to practice on their own. without the confidence of having done it alone in class it's so easy to talk ourselves out of practicing when we go home. When we confirm in class that we are capable of working alone, it supports us when we wake up the next morning and want to train.
The first time I leave a new group alone, there is usually some minor panic. Sometimes a student tells me that she is afraid to practice on her own. "I don't want to do anything wrong," she says. But in actuality, it is much more difficult to work on the form when we have not practice than it is to adjust something that is off. Whether we can correctly reproduce a movement is not the issue when we are first learning it, The most important thing is to give the body the experience of moving in the t'ai chi mode.
I once heard a poignant story about the value of practicing alone- in class and at home. It concerns a couple who spent eight years living and working in Malaysia. Soon after arriving they joined a t'ai chi class near their home. Every morning , seven days a week, they participated in the class. There was no need to practice outside the group because they went almost every day. When they retired back to England, they vowed that whatever else changed, they would continue to practice t'ai chi every morning.
The very first day after they resettled back home, they rose early and went to the park. It felt lonely at first, because unlike in Malaysia, where the parks were full of people early in the morning, their park was almost empty. Still, they took their positions and began to do the form. Halfway through it, they stopped dead in their tracks, Neither of them could remember the rest of the form! Bits and pieces came floating back, but they could not put them together without great effort. For the first time in their t'ai chi practice they found themselves doing the moves over and over, trying to remember what came next.
After some weeks, with a greet deal of effort, they managed to do the whole form, but it felt very strange and unfamiliar. the sense of comfort and security with which they had practiced before was gone. They continued to train for several months until their form felt smooth again. Six months latter they agreed to teach t'ai chi to the many friends and relative who had asked to learn with them. They taught the way their teacher did, but with one difference: they included a session within each class where the students had to practice on their own.
Each time you learn a new move of the form, there will be only one opportunity when you practice it alone for the first time, only one time when you can experience this mixture of fright and wonder. These moments are precious. We can run away from them by not practicing alone and thus resign ourselves to a life of mimicry of someone else's t'ai chi. Or we can greet them with wonder and open arms, thus laying the groundwork for a t'ai chi practice that will always reflect from our own center.
by Linda Myoli Lehrhoupt- t'ai chi as a path to wisdom - chapter 9