What is the purpose of performing in front of others? Is it just for show?
Well, I now think that performing in front of others is part of taiji training. It is part of learning how to stay calm even though your skills are being tested.
In real combat, fear may hinder a person's ability to fully apply his or her skills. Fear can cause a person to tense up, which then goes against the taiji principle of relax. This fear comes from many factors: in real combat, there is that real possibility of injury and even death. But dig a bit deeper into this fear, and it is fear that your abilities are not good enough to win. It is fear that comes from a lack of confidence.
And that is where I think performances come in. Performances expose us to criticism: are we good enough? Performances give us opportunities to face that self-doubt, and learn to overcome it. The more performances we do, the more practice we have in overcoming self-doubt, and the better we get at it.
We all have experienced that nervous feeling before when pushing hands with a total stranger. That nervous feeling that comes from being uncertain if we can hold our ground against someone unknown. But it is that exact nervous feeling that prevents us from relaxing fully, hindering our abilities, and in the end, maybe fulfilling our self-doubt. Therefore, being able to overcome this self-doubt, to be able to overcome this nervous feeling, is essential to being able to fully manifest our abilities.
So we can either keep pushing hands with total strangers, which is one option but not a feasible one for most, or we can use performances as such a proxy. And opportunities for performances are aplenty. Every practice in a public is a performance, since you don't know who may be watching, and what they may think or even come up and say.
Practise more. Practise in public. It is a practice in overcoming self-doubt.
Well, I now think that performing in front of others is part of taiji training. It is part of learning how to stay calm even though your skills are being tested.
In real combat, fear may hinder a person's ability to fully apply his or her skills. Fear can cause a person to tense up, which then goes against the taiji principle of relax. This fear comes from many factors: in real combat, there is that real possibility of injury and even death. But dig a bit deeper into this fear, and it is fear that your abilities are not good enough to win. It is fear that comes from a lack of confidence.
And that is where I think performances come in. Performances expose us to criticism: are we good enough? Performances give us opportunities to face that self-doubt, and learn to overcome it. The more performances we do, the more practice we have in overcoming self-doubt, and the better we get at it.
We all have experienced that nervous feeling before when pushing hands with a total stranger. That nervous feeling that comes from being uncertain if we can hold our ground against someone unknown. But it is that exact nervous feeling that prevents us from relaxing fully, hindering our abilities, and in the end, maybe fulfilling our self-doubt. Therefore, being able to overcome this self-doubt, to be able to overcome this nervous feeling, is essential to being able to fully manifest our abilities.
So we can either keep pushing hands with total strangers, which is one option but not a feasible one for most, or we can use performances as such a proxy. And opportunities for performances are aplenty. Every practice in a public is a performance, since you don't know who may be watching, and what they may think or even come up and say.
Practise more. Practise in public. It is a practice in overcoming self-doubt.
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