charles wrote:Appledog wrote:So I explained to him not to worry, I had studied Yang style under this lineage, Chen style under that lineage, Sun style (which I had demonstrated him earlier) and even spent some time in Eddie Wu's school.
I'm not trying to be confrontational, but I'm curious who were your primary teachers of Taijiquan. Living in the Toronto area, I'm familiar with Eddie Wu's school and used to know several of his disciples. Who were the other of your primary teachers from whom you learned more than most people learn?
I don't think you're being confrontational I believe you're honestly trying to figure this all out just like I am. Let me put it this way. It has nothing to do with who my teachers are. After x number of years I went back and visited one of my old schools. There were 5 or 6 people who had been with this particular sifu for all of that time -- more than a decade. But unbelievably, I was better than they were even at tantui. Despite not having practiced those things for over 10 years. I was actually shocked at how bad the senior students were. I mean, it looked as if they had only been doing it for a couple of months. I teach 5 and 6 year old kids tantui. Their form reminded me a little of teaching those kids in the beginning. I didn't understand, how could they be so bad? Was it their fault? I just didn't understand. Do you understand? It's just that they were not very serious, right? Was that it? What is it about all those people that prevents them from learning?
I actually felt kind of sorry for teacher at that point. How the hell did these people stick with him for 10, 15, 20+ years and never get any good? It's because of the time and dedication it takes to approach this art? Why the heck was he even still teaching? Such a name, such a lineage, so much prestige.. For these people? It's not that they were not good people, they were good, nice people, it's just.. wow, even if you only ever practiced in class I couldn't imagine them being that bad. I dunno. It was just... weird.
I already went through the process of giving up most of my life for this art in preparation of finding some kind of shorter path or short circuit path so that people like this could at least get in the door and not have to give up the art after 10, 20, 30 years. I dropped out of university to practice tai chi in the park in the morning. No teacher told me to do that.
I don't even know the name of some of my teachers. Just old guys in the park.
I'm sorry if this isn't a satisfying answer, but I have to save something for the book.