After a few months with a book or a video series, you can probably run through the first part of your form without looking anything up. That is a reasonable moment to ask whether a teacher would add something. Working out when to find a tai chi teacher is easier with specific signs than with a vague feeling that you ought to, so this piece lists six. Taiji Quan is the formal name for what most people call tai chi, and both names appear here.
What a book or video can teach you well, and the one thing it cannot see
Books and videos are good at the things that stay the same from one reader to the next. They give you the order of the movements, the names, the basic principles, and the background of the form. You can pause, rewind, reread a paragraph and practise at six in the morning in your pyjamas. For a first few months that is often enough, and it costs far less than weekly lessons.
What a page or a screen cannot do is look at you. A video shows the teacher’s body, not yours. You feel your own posture from the inside, and that inside report is unreliable at the start, because your sense of “straight”, “relaxed” or “low” was set by years of ordinary habits. A teacher stands outside you and compares what they see with what you say you are doing. Every sign below is a version of that gap.
Sign one: you can’t tell if a movement feels right or only looks right
Early on, most of us copy the outline of a movement: where the hands end up, how far the feet are apart. The instructions, though, talk about things you cannot see in a mirror, such as which foot carries your weight, whether your shoulders have dropped, whether your chest is held or loose.
Try a quick check. Stop in the middle of a posture and ask yourself which foot holds most of your weight. If you have to guess, or if the answer is different each time you stop, you are matching the picture without feeling what the picture is meant to produce. A teacher can watch you shift, say what they see, and sometimes use a light touch or a simple exercise so you feel the difference once. Often one such moment is worth weeks of solo repetition.
Sign two: the same knee, hip or shoulder complains in the same place
Mild stiffness after practice is common, especially if your joints were already stiff when you began. A complaint that returns in the same joint at the same point in the form is more specific, and it usually means something about the way you are loading that joint is repeating too.
Teachers commonly look for a few things here: a stance that is deeper than your legs can currently manage, a knee drifting inward instead of tracking over the foot, shoulders lifted toward the ears, or a twist coming from the knee instead of the hips. You cannot easily see any of these on yourself, and a flat page cannot see them at all. Our piece on how Taiji looks after your knees, hips and shoulders as you age covers the general principles, but a person watching you move can point to the particular habit.
One caution matters more than the rest. A Taiji teacher is not a clinician. If pain is sharp, if a joint swells, or if discomfort lingers after you rest, see a doctor or physiotherapist before you carry on, and tell any teacher what you were advised. Live guidance is for the ordinary, repeating niggle, not for a symptom that needs a medical opinion.
Sign three: you have stopped improving and can’t say why
At first, practice rewards you quickly. You learn the sequence, the movements start to flow, and each week feels different. Then a plateau arrives, and the form feels exactly as it did a month ago.
Repetition without correction makes your current way of moving more familiar, including any small errors in it. If you cannot name what you would change, a plateau like this is the clearest sign that an outside view would help. Teachers tend to give one or two corrections at a time, and they are often small: a slightly different angle of the foot, a pause before the weight moves, a softer wrist. Small changes of that kind are hard to invent for yourself, because you would have to know what you were missing.
Sign four: you are learning more forms but feeling less rooted in each
It is easy to collect movements. A second form, a Qigong set, another video series: each one is new and interesting, and each adds a handful of postures to remember. Somewhere along the way you may notice that none of them feels settled.
Being rooted, in practice, means a stable feeling of weight passing down through your legs into the floor, so that you can shift and turn without wobbling or stiffening. You can test it by standing in the opening posture of your form for a full minute. If you sway, grip with your toes or hold your breath, adding more movements will not help. Many teachers have students stay with a small number of postures for a long time for this reason, and a teacher can decide with you which posture to stay with and what to look for while you do. Your sense of what is “enough” for a posture is very likely to be too generous.
Sign five: you skip or hurry through the part you can’t manage
Look honestly at your own practice for a moment. Many people notice that they linger over the movements they do well and move quickly through the awkward ones, a transition, a turn, a low step. It is a natural habit, and it means the difficult part gets the least attention.
A teacher will not let the awkward part slide, and will usually break it into pieces that your body can manage today. Having someone else decide what to work on removes the temptation to keep rehearsing what is already comfortable.
Sign six: your questions are bigger than the page
Eventually your questions change from “what comes next” to “what is this supposed to feel like”. How should the breath fit with the movement? What does it mean to “sink” or to “relax” when you are holding a posture? Books answer these in a sentence or two, and the sentence is rarely enough.
If you have reread the same passage several times and still cannot picture it in your own body, you have a question that is better asked out loud. A teacher can answer it, watch what you do with the answer, and answer again in a different way if the first attempt did not help. If breathing is the puzzle, our guide to abdominal breathing in Taiji Quan is a sensible thing to read first, so you arrive with a sharper question.
What a first live lesson looks like, and what to bring with you
First lessons vary, but many follow a similar pattern. The teacher asks how long you have practised and what you have learned from, and about any injuries or health conditions. They watch you do what you already know, offer a small number of corrections, and often give you one standing posture or one movement to take home. You are not expected to be good. Showing your current habits is the point of going.
Useful things to bring:
- Loose, comfortable clothing and flat, thin-soled shoes. Our piece on what to wear for Taiji practice when your joints are stiff goes into the details.
- A short note of any injuries, surgeries or medical advice you have been given, so the teacher can adapt what they show you.
- The name of your form, and the book or video series you have been using.
- Two or three written questions, ideally about specific movements.
- A short video of yourself practising, if the teacher is happy to watch it. Ask permission before you film anyone else or the class.
Arrive a few minutes early, and tell the teacher plainly if something hurts. Good teachers prefer to know.
If a class isn’t possible right now
Distance, cost, a work schedule or a health situation can make weekly classes impractical. A second pair of eyes is still possible in several lower-cost forms:
- Film yourself. Record the same short section from the front and from the side, watch it with the sound off, and note what looks different from what you felt. It is free, and it is the best way to find out what you cannot see.
- Practise beside a mirror. It shows you shoulder height and the line of your spine, though not weight or tension.
- Ask a friend to watch. They need no Taiji knowledge to say “your left shoulder rises when you turn.”
- Try a live online class. Look for a teacher who watches participants on camera and gives feedback, since a recorded class gives you no more than a video does.
- Ask about a single lesson or workshop. Some teachers will see you once or occasionally, which can answer a handful of questions without a weekly commitment. Ask before assuming it is not offered.
Books still have a role between these. If you are building a small shelf, our list of five books for a small Taiji and Qigong shelf describes what each one is good for.
How to choose once you decide to go
Deciding to go is a separate question from deciding whom to go to, and the second deserves its own article. We wrote one: how to choose a Qigong teacher when you’re new and a little stiff. Much of it applies equally to a Taiji Quan teacher. It covers what to ask, what to watch for in a first class, and how a teacher should respond when you mention stiff joints.
One thing to try before your next session
Film yourself doing the opening movement of your form, once from the front and once from the side. Watch both clips with the sound off, and write down one thing you cannot judge from the footage. It might be where your weight sits, whether your shoulders have dropped, or whether your knee is tracking well. Take that question to a first live lesson, or to a teacher’s online class if you cannot attend in person.