Smoky Mountain YSB Study Group Information

Being a Student

By Jim Lindsay

Knoxville, TN, (Smoky Mountain) Study Group

Student –noun:

1. A person formally engaged in learning, esp. one enrolled in a school or college; pupil: a student at Yale.

2. Any person who studies, investigates, or examines thoughtfully: a student of human nature.

     -Dictionary.com, entry for student

As an educator, I have the good or bad fortune of having to come in contact with hundreds of people who claim to be students.  Examining the above definition, loosely speaking, I suppose, many of them have the right to make that claim, but from my growing experience on both sides of the education coin, I’ll stand firm in saying that such a claim is typically tenuous at best.  To speak plainly on the matter, a large proportion of the people I come into contact with in the context of an educator-learner relationship could say that they are a student, my student, in fact, and yet they actually don’t fit the criteria that I, assigned as their teacher, hold for the same designation.

 The second definition of ‘student,’ as given above, is a better definition, in my opinion, which is based on over a decade’s experience as an instructor in a variety of circumstances and as a student for as long as I can remember.  The student of Type 2, per the above, is the rare exception to the norm of my teaching experience that I personally am glad to state, “Yes, that person is my student, and I am that person’s teacher.”  The second definition, you see, puts the responsibility squarely upon the student, the person who studies thoughtfully the subject that is being presented.  The first definition falls utterly short of that benchmark, letting anyone who signs up for ‘the old college try’ to be considered something that they, in reality, are not.

 Teaching and learning, the relationship of the teacher and student, is a two-way street as it turns out. Many people can come and claim that they are, in fact, students of a teacher, perhaps because they attended a lecture by that instructor, read an article or book by that person, saw some educational films, or even enrolled in or attended that person’s classes. That, however, does not make the person a student; studying does.  It also fails to automatically make the instructor that person’s teacher. In my opinion, the teacher must accept the student into that role, accepting the title of teacher in the process, before it is justly claimed, and as I’ve seen it, that truly happens precisely when the teacher is convinced thoroughly that the pupil satisfies not one but both definitions of student.

 What does that have to do with Yin Style Baguazhang?  Well, primarily it means that all of us that train in the art should aspire to truly study the art before we consider ourselves students.  In other words, we must be serious and intelligent about our training, examining both the requirements of training and ourselves thoughtfully, investigating the purposes, meanings, and uses of the skills contained within it, and always studying ourselves through it in order to achieve development. Anyone who has seen the foundational videos on Yin Style or attended a workshop or intensive, or who has been taught by someone who has done those things, has heard again and again to be serious.  In fact, after my first visit to such a workshop on the ‘Fall Tour’ a couple of years ago, I thought “be serious” were He Jinbao’s favorite words in the world, and I therefore tried to take it seriously to heart, training as hard as I could even if I wasn’t doing everything perfectly (and in many cases, I wasn’t even close!).

 How does it translate into real, everyday training? First, there must be real, everyday training.  I’ve said it before: I have a saying on this matter, which is “never zero,” meaning that there is no day that goes by that there is not some form of training, even if it has to remain entirely mental due to other obligations. Train every day. Second, there has to be constant attention during training, not letting the mind wander from subject to subject but rather focusing intently on the activities at hand and the proper requirements that define those activities.  This part, incidentally, is what will help take us out of the unfortunate situation where for nearly a year we may be practicing something hard but incorrectly. To achieve that requires the third aspect of a good, serious student: we must spend time reviewing and investigating the requirements so that we ensure that we do things as well as possible, constantly mulling over what we’ve learned and asking ourselves, while training, if the shape of the body is correct and if the output is truly maximized, refining what we’re doing when it isn’t. Fourth, we should be inquisitive and curious, exploring what we know and experimenting with it, testing it and ourselves while, of course, keeping within the rules and requirements set forth for us while we train.  We are each individuals, different in form, structure, and attitude, and we must find the proper execution for ourselves, using the models given to us by our teachers as guides.  Fifth, and finally, it requires us to admit humility, entering into the entire situation honoring the teacher by recognizing that it is the teacher that knows more about the subject than we as the students. Though cliché, our cups must be empty so that we can adapt our training to the corrections and suggestions handed to us.

 A bit more can be said on that last aspect, particularly that as students, we have the responsibility to make every attempt to do what our teachers ask of us, even if it is difficult, training with our very best efforts and not giving up or deciding that we somehow know better.  Teachers, particularly in the martial arts, are handing down what they have to us, and it becomes our obligation, if we wish to be students, to take what is offered and treat it as well as we can. These ideas here, in fact, are an example of that: they are but a recapitulation of the ideas expressed in the articles written by those more experienced than I along with the words and insights of the instructors that I’ve been fortunate enough to retain until this point. We all, after all, have the same goal as the rest: to strive to live up to the title of ‘student of Yin Style Baguazhang’ and to develop as much as we can along the way.

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