Tai Chi is a beautiful art that offers a myriad of benefits for those who achieve a consistent daily practice, but this means facing some challenges. There are the physical challenges of learning the form, which by themselves are enough to deter many. And once we’ve learned the form, really even while we learn the form, we are seeking to move beyond the choreography of the “task framework” (gong jia / gōng jià)^1† to embody the principles, actual Tai Chi.

Depending on the personality of the student, some aspects of Tai Chi can present additional challenges. For a good number of Tai Chi students, those who tend to be goal-oriented, there is a challenge harder than many others: accepting where we are and working from there.

I can speak from experience. I wanted to ‘know’ Tai Chi, to have ‘mastered’ it. Tai Chi being the Taoist art that it is, the harder I strove to ‘get there’ the less progress I made. This was very frustrating, to where I sometimes struggled to maintain a consistent practice. Making the simplest mistake could send me into a negative spiral of disappointment and self-recrimination that removed the joy and benefits, leaving me feeling frustrated and like a failure. I didn’t understand it that way at the time. I just knew that some practices went well and others quite poorly. It wasn’t anything I could solve analytically with a goal-oriented mindset, something I am pretty accomplished at doing. That just made it harder.

I didn’t realize it then, but I was discovering some of the Tao of Tai Chi. I can still remember my ‘breakthrough’, though looking back I realize it took a long time to get to that moment of ‘breaking through’. One day I told myself I wasn’t going to worry about how good I was, or how many mistakes I made. I would accept my mistakes and work on eliminating them. I would accept where I was in the art and work from there, rather than yearning to be somewhere I wished to be. I received great support and help from my Tai Chi teachers and brethren, but most of all it was the kind and gentle support of my wife and kids. They helped me change so that at a certain point I ‘turned the corner’.

And now, many years later, that is still what I do every day. It is, at the heart of things, what all dedicated students of Tai Chi do: place the “mind and ch’i in the tan t’ien”^2† and invest.

Reflecting on my fellow practitioners over the years, I’m not alone; I’ve seen many others face the same challenges. So if this strikes a chord with you, I hope you’ll find it helpful to remind yourself it’s okay to be where you are in the art. In fact, it’s the only place you can be. Please accept your accomplishments and your limitations. Forgive yourself your faults and mistakes, accepting them for what they are while not using them as a crutch. Aspire to grow in the art and through the ebb and flow of life persevere in your practice, just as Mr. Lo urged us.

Wishing you good fortune and good practice.

1 Cheng Man-ch'ing and T'ai Chi: Echos in the Hall of Happiness; page 101
2 Cheng Tzu's Thirteen Treatises on T'ai Chi Ch'uan; page 41
† If you have questions about Chinese terms used, you may find About Chinese Terms helpful.