Page 78 - The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin_Neat plip book

everything settling into stillness, hi s who le bo dy becoming molten and live. I
was rapt. From the stillness, his palms floated up, the simpl est movement was

profound from this man, and he began to lead us thr ough the open ing po stur es
of the Tai Chi form. I followed along as bes t I coul d. All the profundi ty I was
struck by in Chen’s form combined with a sense of total befuddl ement . His
grace was a world away. I felt stiff and aw kw ard.

After ten minutes Chen broke the class into groups and I was put with a
senior student who patiently described the bas ic pr inci ples of Tai Chi ’s bo dy
mechanics. As we repeated the first few movements over and over, I was told to
release my hip joints, breathe into the lower abdo men, relax my sho ul de rs and

back. Relax, relax, relax. I never knew I was so tense! After years of hunc hi ng
over a chessboard, my posture needed serious attention. The man expl aine d
that my head should float as though it were sus pen ded by a string from the
crown point. T his felt good.

Over the next few months, I learned the sixty bas ic movements of the
meditative form. I was a beginner, a chi ld learni ng to crawl, and the world
began to lift off my shoulders. Ches s was irrelevant on thes e woode n fl ors.
There were no television cameras, no fans, no suf focating pr essur e. I pr acticed

for hours every evening. Slowly but sur ely, the alien languag e be ga n to feel
natural, a part of me. My pr evious attempts at meditation had been
tumultuous—a ball of nerves chilling itself out . Now it was as if my ins ide s
were being massaged while my mind fl ated hap pi ly thr ough spa ce. As I

consciously released the tension from one part of my bo dy at a time, I
experienced a surprising sense of phy sical awareness. A subt le buz zing tickl ed
my fingers. I played with that feeling, and realized that when deepl y relaxed, I
could focus on any part of my body and become aware of a rich well of

sensation that had previously gone u nno ticed. T hi s was int eresting.
From my first days at the school, my interactions with William Che n were
stirring. His teaching style was under stated, his body a well of information. He
seemed to exist on another wavelengt h, tapped into a subl ime reality tha t he

shared through osmosis. He spoke softly, moved deepl y, taught tho se who were
ready to learn. Gems were afterthought s, hidden beneath the br eath, and you
could pick them up or not—he hardl y seemed to care. I was amazed ho w muc h
of his subtle instruction went unno ticed.

A beginner class usually had any wher e from thr ee to twenty stude nt s,
depending on the day or the weather. My favorite sessions were rainy or sno wy