"They don't want to do the work"!

Core moves and hand pushes forward

A student’s son once asked: "Why aren't there more people in class"? I responded, "(for one "good/bad" reason or another)...because they do not want to do the work..." That is the nitty-gritty of what I'm about to say here and why I have seen so many students come and go in 40+ years. I started learning Tai Chi in 1976 and heard from the start that it was “internal”. What I got was teaching that “talked a good game about internal” and I always felt empty. It was only 28 years later that I encountered this level of sophistication in movement. Try this and like playing the piano, just move the ring finger up and down repetitively. Being honest, notice how the other fingers move "extraneously" even ever so slightly On a larger scale, this is the problem one faces with what happens when you learn 1/4 (upper quadrant of core/torso) as Master Hwa shows here. One part moves ok, but the other half of the upper quadrant "chimes" in extraneously and drains off the power of the part you want to move. Piano players face the “extraneous” movement conundrum constantly and have to do designed finger exercises to overcome it The same attention to detail, doing exactly as Master Hwa does here over and over and over, etc., is the way to practice ¼, ½ body movement and holds true for learning “internal” in Tai Chi.