Teacher Training

The training is open to all who are eligible through already practicing with one of the teachers of the School and having a sufficient understanding of our work.

The training of the teachers (postulants, candidates, professeurs) is provided by five top instructors (formateurs) of the international School. It take place usually in one of the 4 training center, among which the CVSPortugal directed by top instructor and head of the School in Portugal and Spain Fabien Bastin, assisted by Jeanne Houde.

Those who are engaged in training are invited to follow a maximum number of workshops – at all levels – given by a formateur from the School.

The training takes place over several years and comprises:

intensive workshops and shorter workshops given by the instructors
the big summer workshops
weekly classes given by the professeurs of the school
your own personal practice

With the School’s Charter you will have all the details for progress that is suggested to everyone who want to participate deeply in this Way.

A few words to teachers

By Vlady Stévanovitch

(School magazine, Tai Chi Quan #2, page 6, 1991)

To become a Tai Chi teacher, one must have certain aptitudes. One must take the necessary time to practice.

In other areas, as soon as one has memorised the required amount of information one can teach and transmit. One can prepare one’s classes and refresh one’s memory. It is sufficient to consult the books.

Nothing like that is possible in our discipline. It is not based on the understanding retained in the memory, but through the development of certain mental and bodily faculties. Be able to transmit, one must acquire these. This is only possible through direct and personal teaching.

But too often, one imagines that these facilities have developed and are transmitted, founded on one’s perception of the reality of the Chi.

When one is capable of feeling the Chi, it is only the beginning. To discover the sensations due to the movement of the Chi only means waking up and leaving the sleep into which we have fallen during our education.

This is nothing more than simply returning to normal. There is plenty left to do to master the Chi and to learn Tai Chi.

In the style that we practice, these perceptions are fundamental to the correct execution of the movements. But this is not all. There are the eyes that open. There are the ears that are unstopped to enable you to listen to the sounds. This awakening often constitutes a very impressive point in the life of a practitioner. After all, to be deaf and then to discover in a few weeks the world of sounds is a spectacular event. It creates possibilities that were inaccessible before, and that remain inaccessible for those who do not have the perception of the sounds. But if one has this perception, this does not mean that one is a musician. Even less a music teacher! It is only that which makes it possible to learn how to play an instrument. And that apprenticeship is long. It can take decades to become a leader of an orchestra or a composer.

To practice our style often means discovering the world of Chi. Sometimes that happens quite rapidly. The novice feels enriched with something that the rest of his group are unaware of. And so he takes on the teaching of Tai Ji Quan.

Whoa, whoa, not so fast! Don’t get confused. Tai Ji Quan is an art. And one does not learn an art in several months, or even years. Art is cultivated, it is perfected, it is elaborated. And in every case there is the need for maturation. To posses an art means submitting to thousands of hours of learning. And tens of thousands of hours of practicing.

You must be an assiduous practitioner who delights in your perceptions and those states of mind that come from the execution of the form. To teach you need more than that. You must transmit. You must have something to transmit. Because the art of Chi is not learned. The indispensable instructions and descriptions that the student receives are never sufficient for him to learn to perform correct and well-formed movements. The art of Tai Ji Quan is transmitted. To receive the transmission you must imitate the teacher. You must flow in the movements, and let yourself be carried. To be permeated with something. You must discover the pleasure of following. For you cannot explain a posture or series of movements. There is no reply to the question ´Why is it like that?’. You can, in good time and with a bit of imagination, give 10,000 justifications. None will be right.

Tai Ji Quan differs from one school to another. Within each school, from one teacher to another. And within each teacher it differs from one year to the next. Because Tai Chi is something living. It is an expression of life. A codified Tai Chi, always the same, rigorously formal, is a dead Tai Chi. You can learn that without a teacher; a book will do.

You do not teach with a book in your hand. The poster that you attach to the wall in your class will not help you. Or your students. You transmit. And the Tai Chi that you transmit must be that which has come to you after much rigorous practice, refined to the point where one can perceive its essence, the absolute logic of the body and the movements. You do not search for the correct movement, it happens. You do not try to do it by yourself without the Chi effect. It is like the action of a magnet passing under a box of iron filings. To attempt voluntarily to do the right movements in Tai Chi without awareness of the energies is like trying to arrange, without a magnet, all the iron filings in a correct order.

When the energies direct the movement, it is always correct. And it is always that which reflects perfectly the internal logic of the body, which is discovered in the course of the practice.

Your role as a teacher is to make this discovery in your students. And their task is to listen to the language of that space. The way that you teach them is nothing more than the creation of the occasion when one listens and one discovers. This is everything…..