Friday was a sad/happy day. We had a guest here for three weeks, living with us and training Taijiquan.

The guest was a Chinese woman older than us, that came to train here for a while. She never trained Taijiquan in her life, but she decided to try it and came here to do it. She is a very nice lady, and we all enjoyed her company here. I wouldn’t mind that she stayed longer, but she has to follow her own life. Her departure was the cause of the “sadness” on that day, but at the same time, I’m happy for her and I understand that she has to leave. Maybe one day she will come back again, when we are already older and more mature.
She has a very special touch of innocence and joy in her. The way she enjoyed the presence of animals and the way she “communicates” with them, makes her seem crazy for those that are watching her, but at the same time, it makes me feel that she has a pure heart. She’s a pianist, and maybe as most of the artists, she has a special sensitivity to some things that other people don’t have, and that’s why I see her that way.

Her journey here, crossed with my personal path in a very positive way… I was assigned the complex and challenging mission of being her Taijiquan personal teacher. This was definitely a hard task. I happily accepted this mission with gratitude and strong will to do the best I could in the short time we had. She only had, three weeks to train and learn the basic patterns of Taijiquan. This experience proved to me, that this program is really the best way to get to the higher levels in a shorter time, with the proper level. In three weeks she learned the first part of the Classical Yang style Taijiquan form, and I would dare to say, with more quality than some people with which I trained for more than six months.
My personal opinion on why that happened is simple:

1- We train 5 days in a row every week. In Portugal I trained 3 days a week with intervals between. To have the same number of days as here, in Portugal, I needed to train 5 weeks instead of 3.
2- We train more time here, three hours. One hour Qigong and two hours Taijiquan. In Portugal, we had 1h30 to train both Qigong and Taijiquan.
3- Qigong and the Basic Taijiquan training was taught by Master Yang, a very important factor.
4- We do more internal training here than in Portugal.
5- We also have to count with her personal ability to learn.

The only thing that I taught her was the first part of the form. She learned it in about one week and a half, and the rest of the time was just refinement. She was a fast learner! She got right away the rotation of the feet movement, that normally gives so much trouble to everyone on the beggining. Most of the postures were also fairly accurate for a beginner. Of course, the form was bad compared with someone who trains for years, and I had to correct some stuff, but I never thought that it was possible to learn so fast as she did. Maybe her background in Ballet also contributed a lot, because from that, she gains body coordination.

It was a very good experience for both of us, I think. It contributed to enhence my teaching skills and for her personal experience of Taijiquan.