Page 8 - The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin_Neat plip book

After about six months of refining my form (the choreogr aphed movement s
that are the heart of Tai Chi Chuan ), Master Chen inv ited me to join the Pus h

Hands class. This was very exciting, my bab y steps toward the martial side of
the art. In my first session, my teacher and I stood facing each othe r, each of us
with our right leg forward and the backs of our right wrists touch ing. He told
me to push into him, but when I did he wasn’t ther e anymore. I felt suc ke d

forward, as if by a vacuum. I stumbled and scratched my head. Next, he ge nt ly
pushed into me and I tried to get out of the way but didn’t kno w whe re to go .
Finally I fell back on old instincts, tried to resist the inco ming force, and with
barely any contact Chen sent me ying i nt o the ai r.

Over time, Master Chen taught me the bo dy mechan ics of nonr esistanc e. As
my training became more vigorous , I learned to dissolve away from attacks
while staying rooted to the ground. I found myself calculating less and feeling
more, and as I internalized the physical techni ques all the little movements of

the Tai Chi meditative form started to come alive to me in Pus h Hands
practice. I remember one time, in the middl e of a spar ring session I sens ed a
hole in my partner’s structure and sudden ly he seemed to leap away from me.
He looked shocked and told me that he had been pus hed away, but he ha dn’t

noticed any explosive movement on my part. I had no idea what to make of
this, but slowly I began to realize the martial power of my living room
meditation sessions. After thousands of slow-motion, ever-refined repe titions of
certain movements, my body could beco me that shap e instinct ively. Someho w

in Tai Chi the mind needed little phy sical action t o hav e great phy sical effect.
This type of learning experience was familiar to me from ches s. My who le
life I had studied techniques, principles, and theo ry unt il they were int egr ated
into the unconscious. From the out side Tai Chi and ches s coul dn’t be more

different, but they began to converge in my mind. I started to trans late my
chess ideas into Tai Chi language, as if the two arts were linked by an essent ial
connecting ground. Every day I noticed more and more similarities, unt il I
began to feel as if I were studying chess when I was study ing Tai Chi . Onc e I

was giving a forty-board simultaneous chess exhi bi tion in Memphi s and I
realized halfway through that I had been pl aying all the games as Tai Chi . I
wasn’t calculating with chess notation or thi nki ng about open ing variations . . .
I was feeling flow, filling space left beh ind, ridi ng waves like I do at sea or in

martial arts. T his was wild! I was winning chess games without playing chess.