Listening, or ting jing, typically starts by building skill through listening inside of yourself. The second step is to take that skill and apply it to another person. Once you can feel yourself, you can feel someone else (a good rule of thumb for developing lots of other internal skills as well).
Try the same approach with your partner.
When you put hands on them, don’t look everywhere trying to find errors. Relax, take your time, and listen to their whole body. What is the single loudest error? What is screaming out at you to be capitalized and pushed?
Find it. Push it.
Communicate with your partner. Have them fix it.
Take another look around. What is the next loudest error?
Repeat.
This process might sound simple and intuitive. You might be asking yourself, “Aren’t I already doing this?”
Probably, but you’re taking the specific skill that you gained listening inside yourself and intentionally applying it to another person. The brain is a very complicated structure (actually… it’s the most complicated structure in the universe). There’s a lot of complex wiring that goes on in there.
Whenever you’ve built a skill in one area that you want to transfer a different area, you have to tap into the original wires for that skill by intentionally remembering/thinking about the skill you developed in the first place. Otherwise the skill doesn’t transfer as well and your brain starts to make brand new wiring.
Ain’t nobody got time for that.
So take the same approach you did with your own errors. Listen to the whole body for the loudest and most obvious error. Have them fix it. Repeat.
Learn more by joining Clear Tai Chi Online
Leave a Reply