So there he is, that famous face from the magazines, a face which doesn't do justice to the photographs that appear with his articles. And here you are. After many years of reading about him and seeing his videos, the word is made flesh. You are at his seminar. He's Chinese; he's Japanese; he's Irish; he's a Filipino. He teaches Karate, Kali, Tai Chi, Qi Gong.
What is or what should be a seminar ? What, if anything, makes it different from a normal training session ?
In the early Seventies, back in dear old Glasgow, before seminars existed, there was the Karate course. Great; the big Japanese Shotokan master is coming up to teach us. We'd pay up in advance and sometimes he'd actually turn up to give the course and we'd march up and down, doing combinations of middle level block, elbow strike, backfist, reverse punch. Sometimes of course his busy schedule wouldn't permit him to appear until the time came to pick up the money and the grading fees, but we understood; after all we were abject insignificant beings, he was a god.
What made it different from normal training ? Well we'd get knocked about a bit more than usual and he'd talk less than our own instructor. But we knew that because he was Japanese this meant that we were really learning something.
Then neither he nor his assistants were available. So our instructor called in Yoshinao Nanbu. We knew that he couldn't really be a proper Japanese master, because he didn't hit us, because he taught us advanced techniques, because he was cheerful and courteous, because he explained things amd because he let us ask questions. Not surprisingly many of the senior grades had severe reservations about Mr. Nanbu.
Doran, my old Karate instructor, told us of the time he'd gone down to London to attend a course held by Masutatsu Oyama. They spent more than one hour practicing the inside block. Well, that's one way to make an impression on the students.
the years that have passed I have seen many teachers teaching. Some teach too little too slowly; some teach too much too quickly. Some are perfectionists in an imperfect world. Some believe that the best way of teaching is to try convince students that they know absolutely everything about absolutely everything. Of course most students believe this about their teacher anyway.
Seminar is jargon from the academic world, the same world that gave us "professors" of Ju Jutsu and Karate. I seem to remember from my days at Glasgow University that a seminar was a relatively informal meeting between lecturer and students where each of us would present our views or papers on a topic of study. I wonder how many "seminars" conducted by my distinguished colleagues in the martial arts fraternity would meet that definition.
In the martial arts seminar, I think there should be a balance. There is little point in overloading students with dozens of complicated techniques and telling them that this is how to learn "concepts". There is equally little point in talking at people. Proper teaching technique requires that not only is information sent out, but that it is both understood and acted upon. This in turn makes it necessary for the teacher to allow questions from the student and that he questions or tests the student to see whether what he has taught has indeed been understood.
I well remember that, when doing a Postgraduate Diploma in Chinese at Ealing College, one of the students in my seminar group was having great difficulty with the text we were working on which described "the Long March". Finally, after three weeks of unequal struggle, Patrick told Mr. Tang that he couldn't make head nor tail of it. It subsequently transpired that although Patrick had been reading the Chinese text from top to bottom, he had also been reading from left to right, instead of from right to left. For Patrick, Chinese was truly a Long March. There is no shortage of Patricks in the martial arts world.
In a normal class most teachers and students just get on with the training, there isn't the time to cover techniques or concepts in depth. In the Chinese martial arts such as Tai Chi Chuan there is the concept of inside and outside the door training. Many of the things my teacher taught me, such as the Six Secret Words of Tai Chi Chuan, he never taught in any class, but on a one to one basis; inside the door. It is very difficult to teach this kind of thing in a normal class. Stupid or lazy students don't understand; clever but unpleasant people - well, teacher isn't too keen on teaching them.
My master didn't give a seminar in the real sense until 1981 - after more than forty years in the martial arts. Why ? It wasn't the way things were done. People had to go to the teacher in the old days, or invite the teacher to spend a concerted period with them. Also in those days ordinary people were more conservative and less willing or able to travel than they are now. The seminars he subsequently gave proved very helpful in covering things we already knew, but in much greater depth, and helping to give some of the background to the inside the door training.
Not everyone can take 10 years out of their lives to live in the Far East and to learn Chinese, not everyone has ready access to expert tuition whether for reasons of distance or time and yet many people in this situation want to study Tai Chi Chuan in depth, in all its aspects.
I first started doing seminars back in 1986. Now I do dozens every year. It gives me direct contact with second and third generation students in Britain and abroad. It also enables me to meet their teachers regularly to improve their standards too. It also gives students who, for whatever reason, can't attend my regular classes the chance to train with me.
Many people have become my students after attendance at seminars. Some subsequently fall by the wayside, some move on to become certificated teachers, helping in their turn to pass on the art.
How many seminar students would consider a master to be their instructor after having attended a seminar ? How many instructors would consider a participant at a seminar to be their student ? I somehow don't think the numbers would tally. I remember Ian Cameron telling me of a relatively junior student of his, who, after attending one of our teacher's seminars, went to the USA and advertised herself as being Cheng Tin-hung's only female disciple. At least she got the female part right.
Seminars have also become a way of having contact with other instructors and other styles. For a number of years now I've been going to Karate and Ju-jutsu clubs in Scandinavia to do seminars; many of the instructors who attend have invited other foreign instructors to give seminars for them; people like George Dillman, and Joe Lewis, not so much to learn their art, as to listen to their ideas.
How much should it cost ? One teacher I know of teaches one Chi Kung move over the course of a weekend - for about £90. Well, at least he's thorough.
Recently, The Tai Chi Union has been putting on Joint Pushing Hands Seminars with up to six instructors from different styles teaching many different approaches. The seminars have proved popular with members and outsiders alike and have also broken down a lot of barriers. Not everyone can or wishes to take part in competition so the seminar can be a useful way to see other teachers, and to train with outsiders.
The most recent seminar in Manchester gave me the excuse to get the TCUGB Secretary, Chris Thomas, to take me and Neil Rosiak, one of my students, to see his old teacher, a living legend, a certain Mr. Danny Connor. Danny and I had a couple of bouts of intellectual judo with honours pretty even, I hope to interview him for Combat, but he's a very shy and retiring chap so it'll take a lot of gentle persuasion.
In the meantime, if any readers are interested in Tai Chi Union activities, including pushing hands seminars please contact one of the Regional Officers listed in Combat's classified section. You'll meet some nice people and might even learn something.