"May your life be interesting..."

Well, ISU changed its schedule. Original schedule (of which my mom still has a hardcopy) was for Fall semester to start on the 29th. Somewhere between May and now that got changed, to the 22nd. So I've got the weekend to get ready. Ah well. It's always more fun when life is interesting. :-) Actually, I was starting to get a bit stir-crazy anyway, so the news is not entirely unwelcome.

The only class I haven't taught before is taiji. But in a sense I'm always teaching taiji. Every time I do the form I learn something new. Every time I make a new observation about how my body moves and reacts, I have learned something knew. So I constantly teach myself. However, that sort of teaching does not require me to put my insights into words. Teaching other people will. Some of them are easily put into words (visualizing a tight spot as a knot to be untied). Some are not. I've finally got the feeling that Kayo Roberston (one of Ben Lo's students) describes, of moving about a single axis, but how I got to that feeling is very odd. Those words sound simple, but it is very difficult to allow your body to move that way.

So... We shall see how things go. I'm...looking forward to teaching taiji, but I'm also nervous. Don described a conversation with a Master once:
Don: "I can show them the form, but I can't make the corrections that you can."
Master: "So show them the form, then send them to me for correction."
So I'll show them the form, then give them some resources to go to if they want to get better. Honestly, you don't really start to learn taiji until you've known the form for at least a year. For some people, it may take five or even ten years of knowing the form. (Beginners never believe that. I didn't, anyway.) And the more I learn, the more I realize there is to learn.