To communicate… we still mostly rely on language, on words. We need to name, describe, compare, and distinguish things — both tangible and abstract — in order to make something clear. But at the same time, language carries a hidden danger: interpretation. This danger usually appears at two extremes. 

On the one hand, the closer we work to the limits of what we know and are able to do, the harder it becomes to capture our experience precisely in words. On the other hand, something similar happens with the seemingly simple descriptions used in tai ji quan. The word itself can be confused with what it points to, or with what we understand by it. As a result, we often assume that being able to name something means we also understand it.

This provides an interesting paradox in the learning and teaching of tai ji quan. A teacher has no choice but to use words to guide a student. He names principles, draws distinctions, and tries to describe experiences the student does not yet know.

But what happens when the student begins to treat those words as the truth itself? And what if the experience he associates with those words is only a first, provisional version of something that can unfold much more deeply through continued training?

Perhaps this is one of the most important lessons from the first verse of the Dao De Jing.

The Dao that can be named

The first verse of the Dao De Jing begins with a thought that at first sight seems almost contradictory.

The Dao that can be taught or named is not the eternal Dao. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of all things. – Lao Zi

And yet the Dao De Jing is made of words. Laozi uses words to point toward something that, by his own account, ultimately cannot be named. That is not a shortcoming. It may instead reveal the function words have: we need them in order to find a base , a starting point.

In his book Infinite Dao, Patrick Kelly refers to a Daoist saying that develops this thought beautifully: behind the words there is an image, and behind the image there is an intention. Once you have understood the image, you can forget the words. Once you have found the intention, you can let go of the image. Then you come closer to reality.

From that perspective, words have a function, but also a limited lifespan. They take us somewhere. After that, we must continue.

A teacher must name things

Those who teach can hardly do without words. A teacher names postures, movements, and principles. He speaks about letting go, rooting, connecting, sinking, opening and closing, and much more. He tries to put into words something he himself has learned to experience through years of training. That act of naming is necessary.

When you cannot yet perceive something, you need someone to show you where to look. A teacher’s words direct attention and intention. They make a first distinction within an experience that, for a beginner, may still feel like one tangled whole.

When a teacher says, “let your shoulders go,” the student can only begin from his current understanding of letting go. When he speaks about connection, the student will look for something that feels like connection within his current possibilities. That is why not every explanation is equally useful for a student at certain moment in time of his practice.

A teacher tries to offer instructions that matches the level at which the student finds himself at that moment. It is not necessarily the most complete explanation, but an explanation that can guide the student in the right direction at that time.

When an instruction becomes a truth

Here a second problem arises: how is the information processed? The brain likes clarity. It looks for patterns, makes connections, and constantly builds models of reality. That is extremely useful, an evolutionary necessity for living and surviving in this world. But the same evolution has also given us the ability to learn in a more guided way. 

However, that very same evolutionary ability can also limit us. We receive a cue, practise with it, and suddenly something becomes tangible. We create a concept and then… something very human happens.

We think: Aha. This is it. This is what my teacher meant.

In that singular moment, an experience can easily become a definition — and the word definitive lies dangerously close. What was originally an instruction for continuing the search becomes something we begin to hold on to.

That does not necessarily have to mean that our experience is wrong. Perhaps, at that moment, it is exactly what we need. But if we treat it as final, the learning process stops and we arrive at an endpoint.

Today's truth

But what is truth within tai ji? How do we determine that something is true? Truth has many faces.

You could say that at least three aspects help determine what we experience as true and truth at a given moment:

• our body,
• our awareness,
• and our intelligence / understanding.

None of these three aspects is static. They change gently and continuously throughout our training.

Our body changes not only because we grow older, which already brings its own changes, but also because the structures within the body are reshaped through tai ji practice. Muscles and joints become more supple, bones may strengthen again to some extent, and our freedom of movement increases.

Our awareness becomes more focused, which means that we effectively begin to sense in a 'different way'. This alone is already a subject that could be explored further. But the greatest shift is turning the focus away from the outer world and guide it deep into our inner world. Like everything else we learn, this requires training, so that we are not constantly distracted or slipping away into a dreamy state. Many think that, once they can retain more this initial focus inward, that they have reached what is being described by the teacher. Yet that ‘different way’ of sensing continues to evolve much further, becoming increasingly refined , more subtle.

The aspect of understanding may seem the most static of the three, because we assume we create and shape it ourselves. Were it not for a fact that the part of the brain responsible for motor function has a mind of its own. It works directly with with all proprioceptive feedback without our conscious direction. We cannot control or influence that process using our intellect, despite all the concepts we create. The deep body awareness forms its own concepts of movement that are more complete than anything we could ever conceive of by our intellect. If we are honest enough, this very tension between deep awareness and the reflections and thoughts generated by the neocortex, will refine and enhance our ability to understand what we are actually experiencing.

So, the remakable thing is that the instrument with which we observe, changes gradually while we are using it. It sounds almost like quantum physics: the instrument influences the experiment.  

What today still lies beyond our skill of awareness may perhaps become visible or tangible later — not because reality has changed, but because our capacity to sense and be aware has changed.

A young sprout is not a wrong version of the tree it will later become. It is fully what it can be at that moment.

In a very similar way, a first experience or understanding can be correct and necessary for the stage in the training we find ourselves in. Perhaps the teacher guides us deliberately to that point, as only from from there the next step become visible.

Another aspect of this was discussed earlier in the blog The body as a means of learning.The body is not just something we use to carry out what we know. It is also the instrument with which we continue to discover and learn.

Same words, different meaning

And yet the words often remain exactly the same. Relaxed remains relaxed. Song remains song. Connection remains connection.

But the meaning of those words, more specifically what we experience by them, will change greatly over the years if the the training remains intentional and deep.

What we understand by “relaxed” in our first years may later prove to have been only a very rough first approximation. Not because that first experience was wrong, but because in the meantime we are more aware and perceive more detail helming us to distinguish more.

In this way, within tai ji quan we continually return to the same principles, because we meet them time and time again everytime from a slightly changed view.

The learning process in tai ji quan is not a straight line from ignorance to insight and knowledge. It can be seen more as a spiral. We return to the same words and the same principles, but each time from a slightly different position.

An intentional practice brings experience. Through experience, understanding is refined. From that new understanding, we again investigate what we thought we already knew. In that process, we often do not need to let go of the principle itself, but rather we need to let go of the image, idea and concepts we created around it. If we truly could let go of these concepts, then our insght can evolve and refine. Otherwise, the very thing that first helped us may later prevent us from looking further. So it is not only a matter of letting go of physical tension. See also the blog: Letting go as a key process in tai ji..)

The more we understand, the greater the unknown

Here we find another paradox. As our experience and knowledge grow, we might expect everything to become clearer and more certain. In part, that is true. We learn to make finer distinctions, and certain experiences become more reliable. At the same time, however, more and more nuances become visible.

Where we once felt one thing, we begin to discover differences. Where a principle once seemed simple, we suddenly see multiple layers. Every discovery therefore not only clarifies what we now understand, but also reveals new limits to that understanding.

True deepening does not necessarily lead to ever greater certainty. Rather, a more refined awareness arises of what we still do not really know. 

This requires a particular mindset on the part of the practitioner: enough confidence to work seriously with what you understand today, but enough openness to accept that this understanding may need to shift again tomorrow.

From this will emerge something that is regarded as core aspect within Taoism, and which therefore becomes increasingly more important in long-term tai ji practice: humility. Not because we know nothing, but because we are beginning to see more clearly just much there is still to explore.

The responsibility of the teacher

Hence, the role of the teacher becomes also special. A teacher does not simply pass on information. He tries to give direction to a process. Meaning that the same explanation is not necessarily suitable for every student, and not every student finds him or herself capable of working with what has been said.

Sometimes a teacher must simplify. Sometimes he must emphasize a distinction strongly. Sometimes he must let a student work with one particular idea for years on end. And sometimes he must withhold new answers precisely because something essential still needs to be experienced or integrated more strongly by the practitioner.

But sometimes the moment also comes when precisely that which was once carefully built up must be let go of once more.

Just as scaffolding is used to build a house. The scaffolding is necessary during construction, but it is not the house. Once the building can support itself, the scaffolding can be taken down.

For the student, this can be confusing. “First you said I had to do this. Now you say something else.” But that is not necessarily a contradiction. The first instructions brought the student to a place where the next instructions can lead him or her further along the path. This also means that a certain relationship and mutual trust have to develop: sincerity, goodwill, and above all curiosity and motivation.

A teacher cannot walk the path for a student. They can provide direction, point out doors and try to prevent someone from going round in circles endlessly. This touches on one of the ideas that gave rise to the blog One path or many paths? That blog explains that the teacher functions more as a guide than as the owner of the truth.

And sometimes a training partner provides a necessary mirror. In Tui Shou, something that seemed perfectly correct in our own movement may suddenly appear far less self-evident once we truly come into contact with another person.

Then experience becomes information again. Not to prove that we were wrong, but so that we can refine again.

Back to the first verse

This may well be exactly what the first verse of the Dao De Jing means when it comes to the learning process of tai ji (quan).

The problem is not that we name things. We must name them.
Without words, it is difficult to point things out, to learn, to compare or to investigate. A teacher needs words and a pupil needs concepts in order to find their way.

The problem arises when we forget that what is named provides a point of entry to something that extends far beyond, and therefore does not necessarily define reality itself. The Dao that can be named is not the eternal Dao. Perhaps that is why we must take words seriously as long as they help us to look and seek, whilst remaining prepared to let them go once they have served their purpose.

The teacher offers words.
The student explores.
Experience refines.

Behind the words, we begin to grasp an image.
Behind the image, we gradually begin to understand the essence and the intention.
And perhaps one day, there comes a moment when even that image is no longer needed.

Not because we finally understand everything, but because we have learnt not to be so quick to conclude that we understand.
The words have then done their work.

What remains is to continue walking the path to which the words were merely trying to point all along. To let everything flow from a place of balanced intention. Everything is present, even if we do not always understand it.