Advance Like A Hamster

The one thing that frustrates beginning Tai Chi students (and advanced ones too) is not being “given” the next movement when you’re sure you know the one you’ve just learned. Why do I have to keep going over and over stuff I know? Why won’t you show me the next move? At this rate it will take me years to get through the form. Yes. It will. There is an underlying Taiji-ness that you may not “get” for years. You learn by observing and following, and certainly, if you’re good at this you can be led through the whole form in no time at all. But consider how much you will then have to “unlearn” and correct later.

There is an old radio announcer’s test called “One Hen, Two Ducks.” It can be used as a memory test as well as a tongue twister. First you repeat, “one hen.” Then you repeat, “one hen, two ducks.” Then you get the next phrase, which is “three squaking geese,” added to the end of the first two. This continues through a list of ten phrases which gets longer and more complicated as it evolves. In case you are interested, here is the whole test:

* One hen
* Two ducks
* Three squawking geese
* Four limerick oysters
* Five corpulent porpoises
* Six pair of Don Alverzo's tweezers
* Seven thousand Macedonians in full battle array
* Eight brass monkeys from the ancient sacred crypts of Egypt
* Nine apathetic, sympathetic, diabetic, old men on roller
skates with a marked propensity towards procrastination and sloth
* Ten lyrical, spherical diabolical denizens of the deep who
hall and stall around the corner of the quo of the quay of the quivery,
all at the same time.

Learning Tai Chi is something like learning "One Hen, Two Ducks." Suppose you get all the way to "five corpulent porpoises" but you have forgotten or mislearned "two ducks." Thus, it is important to advance like a hamster: gradually and precisely. And don't count your hens before they are hatched!