Best regards, Mark
webmaster taichido.com, taichidoshop.com, editor Taichido Newsletter

I received an email from a young person who had "began an A level unit on complementary therapies and had taken particular interest in tai chi". She then asks: "What qualifications would a tai chi teacher need?" I have been thinking about this all month and the best I can come up with now is ... depends!

It all depends upon what kind of tai chi teacher you want to be. If you want to be the kind of tai chi teacher who does it in an ultra cool gym-cum-dance studio-cum-therapy centre then yes; get as many qualifications as you can! If you want a job as a tai chi instructor in that kind of environment then impressive-sounding [but not necessarily valid] qualifications will eventual get you and help you keep a job - because that is what potential employers like to see. They (potential employers in ultra cool gym-cum-dance studio-cum-therapy centres) will rely upon and indeed judge you upon your qualifications. They will have to because this is all they have got to go on; in other words, they probably won't know a thing about tai chi! So what? That, they say, doesn't matter. What does matter is they know what their clients want or perhaps more precisely, how much they are prepared to pay.

Through this (regrettable, but yet here to stay and set firm to continue) process it has come to be that if you can impress an employer with credentials and a self confident presence at interview, you may well be holding a class within the week because clients have already formed an orderly queue (being added to the data base) and are just itching to get on with tai chi lessons with a "highly qualified tai chi master". But do be aware that in exchange for this honorific title your tai chi will be dictated by market forces and become whatever your employers or clients suggest it should be.

Yes, there is a hint of sarcasm in my tone, perhaps. Perhaps there is that, but there is no bitterness and no resentment anymore because, if only to claim the liberty myself, I am happy to except that it takes all sorts and there is room for all. I am happy to coexist with ultra cool gym-cum-dance studio-cum-therapy centers, provided that they can coexist with me! In either arena (personal or corporate) its a job and someone has got to do it. In the case of the former, my personal case, it is a job I want to do but my motivation for doing it - this much ... still - is not money. In the case of the latter, well that's a job and it is the way of jobs; one is paid for doing what one is asked (ultimately told) to do - and them's the rules. I also know that the bottom line of the rules is 'take it or leave it' and I do so take it or leave it in the same way that everything connected with tai chi should be taken or left, and that is "with non-ado" or as Hemmingway said in his machismo way, "no thanks, no explanation".

I consider myself to be most fortunate to have had a tai chi teacher who was perhaps the last of a dying breed, for he was one who drilled it into me that "one should always be prepared to put more into your practice than you will ever take out". So that's the rule, the one rule. Take it or leave it, it is easy to understand: out equals a lot, in equals whatever ... less. In the army the rules are a little more complex: Rule one, follow all the rules and, Rule two, always do what I say! My tai chi teachers one rule is therefor easier to follow - because there is no rule 2. The rule, in other words is "just do it for the doing" and without being told what to do!

So, when all is said and done it seems that I am not the right person to ask about qualifications and tai chi because I do not accept that being good at passing exams can be equated in any way to doing good tai chi. The tai chi that my teacher taught me was "like water, always seeking the lowest point and the way of least resistance" and all that I can remember him ever saying anything about what it takes to become a tai chi teacher is: "It takes about twenty thousand 'good' tai chi students to make one 'good' tai chi teacher."

I personally believe that the motivation or intention of a tai chi teacher is far more important than having qualifications in other stuff ... because it is central to the philosophy of the kind of tai chi that I was taught that the accumulation of stuff is not the way of least resistance.

I am aware that this is a rather fundamental or simplistic view - and that is why I began by saying that I was "happy to except that it takes all sorts and there is room for all" and I am happy to abide by the law of take it or leave it!

Since deciding upon a release date for our made for T.V. triple dvd electronic learning media of the Yang Long Form and fine tuning a convention for sharing and transporting html, php, flash and audio and video files between Mark and I, work has continued at pace and a great deal has been achieved. That is the good news but I am afraid that the bad news is that there is still plenty to do ... and I trust that this is explanation enough for the relative brevity of this months issue; hoping also perhaps that the passion of my views and my loyalty to the maintaining of 'pure' tai chi "with nothing added and nothing taken away" makes up for a shortness in words.

The decision that Mark and I came to - to not go flat out for a pre-Xmas release of the T.V. dvd was not based upon market forces anymore than our motive for attempting it in the first place was to make a quick buck. We accept that it enters the market as a product and we do of course hope that it sells but over and above this we want to be completely certain it is as 'good' as it can possibly be before release. Text rewritten until we are really happy with it, an original soundtrack created for the full zan garden videos, and so on.

For a preview of the soundtrack please go to threetimes///a long playing record @wheelswithinwheels.net and select "SAME AS THIS - SAME AS THAT".
This piece was recorded live at one of our annual social gatherings held in the dojo here in Southampton a couple of years ago and it takes more or less exactly as long to perform as the Yang Long Form does, and as such it is a musical expression of that form.

I have deleted my verbal introduction of the piece from the downloadable version put online because I felt it took up unnecessary space there but under the circumstances I think it pertinent to repeat some of it here now. I happened to say that it had been "written 'just for the doing' and would be played in the same spirit ... and I didn't really care if it were never played or heard from beginning to end ever again.
I am so pleased to I have been proved wrong again and that this music will live on in a way that I could never have imagined when I began to write it (alone and without being told to) just for the doing.

Gary 14th Nov 04.