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THE VALUE OF MARTIAL ART WORKSHOPS
Author: Michael Babin
IN THE LAST five years of teaching a Yang style of Tai Chi, I have come to realise just how important it is to attend an occasional workshop given by someone whose understanding of the art is more mature than my own.
Recently, after several years of correspondence, I and my students had the opportunity to train with Erie Montaigue when he agreed to add Ottawa, Canada, to his Spring 199] tour of schools in England and the United States.
For those who have never trained with, heard of, read the articles or studied the videos of this man, Erie has been practising Tai Chi Chuan since 1968, and trained with Master Wong Eog, Master Chu King Hung and Grandmaster Chang Yiu-Chun. He was certified as a Master in ] 985, on the Chinese mainland; is the Chairman of the World Taiji Boxing Association and publisher/editor of the quarterly magazine, Tai Chi Combat & Healing.
No matter what their level of Tai Chi martial skill or experience, few are so well-balanced in their development that they couldn't benefit from the opportunity to learn from and compare approaches with someone of his expertise and experience.
Beginners get the opportunity to "sample the wares" of a master practitioner, so as to help them decide what directions they want their training to take. More advanced students get to experience approaches to the art that may be very different from those to which they are accustomed. And advanced practitioners have the opportunity to discuss and refine their theoretical and tactical skills.
No matter what your style or level of accomplishment, a few hours/days applying yourself with more experienced instructors can bring results that would take months or years (or possibly never come) if you were working on your own, or solely with the instructor of your own style.
Perhaps of greater importance, if you are instructing Tai Chi, you do your own students a great disservice if you fail to get those workshop insights that might help you to help them develop. In addition, your rigid example may make them feel reluctant to explore the learning process available through such seminars.
When you teach Karate, Yoga or Kung Fu, you know that your students will have a common thread of interest in being in class. When you teach Tai Chi, there are no such assurances: The beginners/observers may arrive expecting or wanting any of a half-dozen different approaches and may not want to associate with those who interpret the art differently.
Consequently, you have to admire the confidence of the Tai Chi instructors like Erie who are willing to travel far from home to teach weekend short-term seminars to comparative strangers. Will this school be a group of New Age Yuppies horrified at the thought of Push Hands ... or will they be a gang of brawlers who think Tai Chi is vastly inferior to their martial skills and want proof that it works?
Wherever we may have fitted into that spectrum of the Tai Chi universe from his point of view, my students and I were hardly disappointed by our IS-hour introduction to Erie's 'Australian Rules' Tai Chi!
Like the other high-profile instructors I have been fortunate enough to meet and do workshops with in the last few years, ErIe is a complex and talented individual. Aside from his martial accomplishments, he is a talented musician, songwriter, photographer, writer, as well as a devoted family man. Over the years he has earned a controversial reputation - especially in North America - and is accused of being overly concerned with the self-defence aspects of Tai Chi. In person, however, Erie is a quiet and polite individual who spent a great deal of his spare time playing with my two sons.
For a big, strong, middle-aged man, his slow form is both beautiful and powerful, and has an internal quality that is immediately obvious to the discerning. His martial tactics are brutally effective; especially when compared to the wishful thinking that passes for self-defence training in many Tai Chi schools. However, his control with us was always superb.
I was deeply impressed by his feel for the core interactive training methods of Tai Chi (Push Hands and Da-Lu) as well as his general skill, patience, teaching ability and sense of humour. The latter also has to be experienced to be believed, but is a reflection of the healthy attitude that training in Tai Chi can be 'fun' as well as effective. Such humour is a refreshing change from the many instructors who equate seriousness and skill attainment. The world needs more laughter and fewer individuals seeking 'mastery' of themselves and others!
Being human, Erie is also bluntly opinionated but that seems to be a characteristic of almost everyone at his level of experience and expertise that I have met. To his credit, he only offered such opinions when asked directly for his comment. By contrast, other seminar leaders that I have met were more-than-willing to volunteer their negative comments about any approach that differed from their own.
His Push Hands are forceful by the standards of many Tai Chi players but that force, as I experienced it, was not the result of an over-reliance on strength. In many ways, his general approach (as opposed to specific training methods) reminded me of Dr Yang Jwing-ming of Boston, in the United States. This judgement is based on my limited exposure to both and, in all fairness, I'm not sure that either man would be pleased at such a comparIson.
Erie may seem, at first glance, aggressive in terms of his training methods and the self-defence tactics he advocates; but I am certainly more comfortable with his general approach than with those who wrap their Tai Chi in mystical nonsense! It should be obvious to anyone with any sense that it is impossible to learn selfdefence tactics that are effective without training vigorously.
In fact, when you are exposed to the experience and talents of an instructor like Erie, it becomes a challenge to fail to learn, no matter how limited or advanced your own level of skill and experience. The real challenge in training with Erie, or those at his level, lies in not succumbing to despai r when comparing one's lesser abilities to theirs. It's very hard to accept that you are not quite as good as you would like to believe and to allow yourself to grow, no matter what your age or level of expertise.
The process of maturing as a Tai Chi instructor and/or practitioner is a process of sorting through and discarding information, not just accumulating it. The example and insights provided by instructors like Erie is crucial in helping the lessexperienced to achieve such maturity.
Australian Martial Artists have every reason to be proud of the international efforts of instructors like Master Erie Montaigue.
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