Jason Chan's Monthly Message continued

ones will last the distance and graduate nearly three years later.

Some new students always seem to get off to a flying start with a natural talent for movement, loads of enthusiasm and apparently total commitment. But some of these fast starters do not manage to finish the three-year course. Other beginners, if I am being totally honest, are so awkward, shy, or out of alignment, when they first start the course, that I cannot begin to imagine that they will ever graduate as Infinite Tai Chi teachers –but miraculously they do!

Over the years, I have wondered, ‘What is the most significant difference between these two groups of students?’ and the answer I have come up with is pretty simple - sticking power. In this very sophisticated modern Western world, we all have a tendency to want instant results. We send an email to someone, and hope for a reply within the hour. We feel peckish and so we make ourselves an instant soup or a pot of instant noodles. We hate being kept waiting for anything, and a delayed plane, or a call centre answering queue, can send us quite insane.

Unfortunately, not everything in our world can be ‘instant’. Some skills that may be incredibly valuable to us take quite some time and effort to master. Tai Chi, Chi Kung and meditation definitely fall into this category. Even after 20 years of continuous practice, I am still deepening into the art of Infinite Tai Chi, and yet some would-be students assume that they can master it in just a few weekends with virtually no practice in between. They then become frustrated when they fall behind those students who practise their tai chi form for up to several hours a day five to seven days a week come hell or high water.

There are now thousands of different paths and skilful means designed to aid you to transform yourself, but this can be a trap as well as an opportunity. We have so many choices in our modern society, that as soon as one course or path becomes too ‘boring’ or too ‘challenging’, or one teacher whom we have put on a pedestal ‘falls off’, we simply leave and find another one.

 However, if you really want to become a fulfilled, joyful and abundant human being, you must eventually choose one self-development, or spiritual, path and stick to it through thick and thin, or you will be in danger of becoming a self-improvement junkie.

You may go from one transformational course to the next, seeking the magic mantra or formula that will make everything all right, but at the end of another year, you find yourself back where you started, lonely, short of cash, sexually unfulfilled and still searching for happiness.

To begin with, many of us, who are now on a committed spiritual path, wandered around like this, looking for someone, or something, to guide us to ‘The Promised Land’, but at some point we all have to choose a path that makes our heart sing and then stick to that path through thick and thin.

If you truly master just one path, or practice, such as Tai Chi, or meditation, you will have mastered all of them. Your chosen path may be far from easy at times, but I strongly recommend that you resist abandoning it to start again with a new, and initially more exciting, practice. All true self-development or spiritual paths will challenge your personality-self to the utmost. You just need to be brave and determined and stick to one practice until you begin to reap its rewards- and please remember that this can sometimes take years, not weeks or months.

So my message to you this month, as the lush green of summer gently gives way to the glorious colours of autumn, is this: whether you are resuming a course after a well-deserved summer break, or starting a completely new course, career, or another new enterprise of some kind, please be patient and stick at it for a while

Don’t demand instant gratification, and don’t impose impossibly high standards on your chosen teachers or mentors. Let your chosen path unfold. Let it work for you. Find the courage and the self-discipline to keep going right to the top of the mountain, even when the going gets really tough. Why? Because, the views at the very top of the mountain are awesome, and, as L’Oreal is always reminding you, you are so worth it!