Ask Yang stylists if Ch'eng Man-Ching students practice a form of the Yang style.
Ask Ch'eng Man-Ching stylists why T.T. Liang went off on his own.
Ask any traditional T'ai Chi Ch'uan instructor what he/she thinks of push-hands competition at tournaments.
Ask T'ai Chi instructors for stories of students who went off to teach after only short-term instruction. (Like I heard quoted once, "Americans don't want to learn T'ai Chi, Americans want to TEACH T'ai Chi).
I personally don't get involved in T'ai Chi politics, but now and then you brush up against it.
yup thats about it...also its amazing how many organisations have sprung up...promote rubbish and get government backing....for some it was just a case of who started first and thats all the credentials they need.
Its very hard not to get embroiled in politics....I had another teacher for a while come to my classes and sit on the side lines watching everything I did, then he brought a mate and they sat giggling and pointing until we booted them out.....and then we got the comments 'you must be really insecure if you can't have people from other schools watching your class'...yeah yeah yeah, get lost, for a while everytime we put up a poster, this guy would stick one right over the top of take mine down.......made me wonder who really was the insecure one?
"Americans don't want to learn T'ai Chi, Americans want to TEACH T'ai Chi
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: Yup I have got one of these ex students who now thinks she is ona par with me, she claims to have been studying for 4 years (yet started in 2000) and that was adult ed, 10 week intro blocks. She came on a workshop recently and told me she had 'mastered' the simplified form, and then proceeded to be extremely rude to me while I was teaching the workshop......:shrug:
Sigh, politics in Tai Chi. I personally do not like politics, thank goodness I haven't been involved in much with respect to Tai Chi. Unfortunately, I think politics is almost unavoidable when running public classes, and even harder to avoid when there is a large organization. Tai Chi is supposed to be able to be used in real life, so how do you folks think Tai Chi can be used in politics? I used to think that I'd just avoid politics, but when it's there, ignoring it isn't a good response. It's like if there is an incoming force, ignoring it does not dissolve the problem. So how do we stick and yield to these politics so that we can control/get rid of it?
