Visualization as a Tool to
Learning Taiji
2007-10-R7
(Copyrighted 2007
by Don M. Tow)
In the last release of this website,
I posted Part 1 of two articles on “The Essence of Taijiquan:
Perspective from Taiji Push Hands,” and said
that Part 2 “The Essence of Taijiquan:
Perspective from Taiji Qigong” will be posted
in this release.
I decided that the Part 2 article will be
posted in the next release in December 2007.
In its place, I have posted this article
“Visualization as a Tool to Learning Taiji.”
As we know, Taiji is practiced by
millions of people all over the world.
So Taiji must be something that is not that
difficult to learn.
It is true that anyone with a commitment to
learn Taiji and who has a knowledgeable instructor to learn from and is
willing to spend the time to practice it will eventually be able to learn
it.
However, this does not mean that one can pick up Taiji
quickly, or one can learn it without putting in the time and effort to
practice it.
As a matter of fact, anyone who has tried to
learn Taiji will tell you that it is not so easy to learn and to remember
all the forms, even in a simple set like the Yang Style 10 Form or the
Simplified Yang Style 24 Form.
Furthermore, after one has learned it, if one
doesn’t practice it for several days or a couple of weeks in a row, then
there is a high probability that one will have forgotten some of the forms.
This is true for everyone, but especially true
for senior citizens who learn more slowly and forget more quickly.
There is a tool called
“visualization” that can help you to learn Taiji quicker and better, and
also retain your knowledge of Taiji longer.
Visualization is a tool that is frequently used
by athletes of almost every sport.
The tool’s usefulness is not just confined to
sports, but is also useful for learning or practicing almost any skill in
school or in work.
Visualization is to practice your
Taiji forms in your mind.
You go through in your mind each form in a form
set.
Your mind sees an image of yourself performing the
forms.
If you are not sure whether you are doing a particular
form correctly or don’t remember at all a particular form, don’t worry about
it, just do what you know or just skip over that form and continue in your
mind with doing the next form.
It is like seeing a video of your performance
without first needing to shoot a movie of your performance and then playing
it back on a VCR or DVD player.
Visualization is best used with the
availability of a video of an instructor/expert performing the form set.
After you have finished your visualization
exercise, you can turn on the VCR or DVD player and refresh your memory of
any form that you weren’t sure that you did it correctly or that you have
forgotten.
There are two distinct advantages of
using visualization as a tool.
One is that it can be done almost anywhere,
anytime.
You can practice visualization while you are taking a
shower, lying in bed before you fall asleep at night or before you get up in
the morning, waiting for a bus or train, etc.
Another advantage is that the time it takes you
to visualize the performance of a form set can be much shorter than the time
it takes to actually perform the form set.
This is because you can speed up the
visualization without significantly reducing the effectiveness of the
visualization.
Therefore, you can practice your forms via
visualization more frequently and more quickly.
I want to mention a common mistake
that beginning Taiji students often make which is that their practice
consists totally of following someone else in doing the forms.
That someone else may be their instructor, a
more knowledgeable fellow student, or an instructor on a VCR or DVD.
I can almost guarantee that you will not be
able to learn a form set if you never practice the form set yourself over
and over again.
Doing a form set (or just trying to do a form
set) once yourself is more beneficial for learning and remembering the form
set than doing the form set 10 times while following someone else.
As previously mentioned,
visualization is used by many athletes in preparing for a performance or a
meet.
Besides sports, visualization can be used in schools,
e.g., visualize in your mind the locations and names of various bones and
muscles while preparing for a test in an anatomy and physiology class.
Visualization can also be used at work, e.g.,
visualize in your mind the presentation that you will be giving for a
customer, your boss, or your colleagues.
Using visualization as a tool in
learning Taiji can help you learn the forms faster, remember the forms
better, and determine better whether you are doing the forms correctly.
It is a tool that you can use to enhance your
practice essentially anywhere and anytime.
I want to end this article by
mentioning a mental attitude shift that I have found extremely beneficial in
my own Taiji journey.
We all know that learning any new skill always
requires practice.
In my first few years of learning Taiji, I
looked upon practice as something that “I have to do,” that it is something
that my instructors have told me that I need to do.
However, starting several years ago, I changed
my mental attitude toward practice and started looking upon practice as
something that “I want to do.”
Ever since I changed to that new mental
perspective, I have enjoyed practicing Taiji much more, even though the
practice has become significantly longer.
When I am practicing, I no longer constantly
check the clock to see how much more time I still need to practice.
As a matter of fact, now if three-to-four days
go by without practicing Taiji, I can’t wait to go back and practice again.
I strongly recommend that you give such a
mental perspective a try.
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