Famous Qigong and internal martial arts teachers, you need to seriously up your game!

[Harmonious Emptiness]

It's awesome and all that you have written books, are world famous, led workshops and classes with thousands of people and such. Also awesome that you have this amazing lineage.

 

HOWEVER, seriously folks, teach EVERYONE the basics, the principals, the stuff that actually makes it WORK!

 

Because if you don't, when your students go train with others, and the new teacher says "OK so you know the standard posture, we can skip over that as it is your first class", and the student looks confused and says that hasn't been covered before.... it makes you look bad. Really bad. I don't mean that the student doesn't have good posture, I mean as in have never heard of feet about shoulder width apart pointing forward and/or tailbone under and/or head/neck up straight and etc. (varies a tiny bit by path), mingmen out, tongue to the roof of the mouth (seriously, some of you guys skip that bit, wtf?), anus and/or perinium and/or genitals tensed a bit (or a lot, dep on path)... some of you folks skipped ALL that?! This is first class, or at least first few classes sort of stuff! Not skip it during an entire 4 month course, or a bunch of several day long workshops. Seriously, what were you thinking? You really honestly think having the student stand there however and wave their arms about a bit is considered qigong? You think that random posture and no structure = martial arts?!

 

Or how about famous Bagua teachers who call walking about in a circle just as one is walking down the street circle walking?! Oh sure it's difficult as hell, especially for new folks, but there is a lot more to it than just wandering around in a circle! Such as that posture bit mentioned above. Structure. Where to power from, and etc.

 

Yes, yes I know, not every student is your disciple, or even necessarily good at it. That is irrelevant, sometimes the "worst" students end up being the best in the long run simply because they practice more. Also even for someone who doesn't practice much, correct practice will help their health at the very least. Perhaps you think "oh they won't understand it in the first year or two". Yeah whatever, try anyways, give them something to work on, something which should be taught from day one so they don't end up with bad habits, bad practice, qi deviations or other ill affects, or perhaps just make your teaching and you look bad.

 

Famous teachers, I feel you should take your art and your teaching more seriously.

 

Your students deserve it. The path deserves it. There has already been enough lost over the centuries; we don't need huge gaping holes in the fundamentals to completely destroy the art all together!

 

On a side note, fortunately every single teacher I have ever trained with (accept one, which I only attended a few classes with), covered the essentials very early on.

 

Yes this is all true, yes these are actual experiences, yes I mean more than one famous teacher.

 

This is true for martial, but chi gong doesn't require tension outside of tree-standing, imho.