A posting earlier this month ("real deal") has generated quite a bit of email to me regarding teachers in the States. The gentleman who initiated the post mentioned a quote from an article I'd written some years ago, "Kung Fu Comes to America". In the article I'd said that in my opinion there were fewer than a dozen highly skilled teachers of traditional Chinese martial arts in the States teaching openly to non-Chinese. This was Chinese martial arts in general, much less xingyi or bagua.
First, lineage doesn't necessarily count. While the fact that a teacher comes from a particular lineage indicates that he or she might have had access to a set of skills which are a known quantity, it says little about the teachers own skill, his or her level of understanding of combat application, body mechanics, power generation, and training methods. It also says little about the teacher's ability to communicate clearly and train others.
A good teacher should be able to clearly and plainly explain movements and concepts without resorting to mystical explanations (eg "qi"). A sign of a good teacher is one who takes the time to correct the students alignment and can demonstrate the difference in application between good and poor alignment. The teacher should allow the students to touch the teacher's body while the teacher demonstrates, so that the student can understand where the force is being generated - what muscles are being used, and in what sequence. Applications should not have to depend on the cooperation of the opponent - too often I see students who are accustomed to punching and leaving their arm out while their teacher demonstrates numerous counters. One doesn't need skill to beat on an outstretched arm.
Training should be from the ground up, with the understanding that each system has its own requirements for stance work. Techniques learned without a stable yet mobile base are not kung fu. Conversely, while each system has its own requirements, all kung fu systems generally emphasize to a greater or lesser degree the same mechanical alignments - hip and shoulder in the same vertical plane, shoulder blades retracted, center line of the knees aligned with the center line of the foot and so on.
Americans and Europeans have to some degree been brainwashed into believing that groveling and debasing oneself is a part of the traditional teacher student relationship. While that may be the message which comes across in some movies and television programs, nothing could be further from the truth in Taiwan and China. Those teachers who verbally and physically abuse their students do so because of their own psychological problems, those students who put up with it do so because they have either placed a higher value on learning than on their own self worth, or because of other personality pathologies of their own. A friend of mine once noted that the monks didn't take in orphaned/abandoned/abused children merely out of compassion. They took them in because these were the most easily molded, as they would tend to desire a strong parental figure, and wish to avenge the wrongs of the world, when the real issues were within.
Many teachers in the states use an authoritarian approach to hide their own shortcomings, both in skill and socially.
A good teacher, if they are still physically capable (ie if age and body still permit) should be able to demonstrate the techniques themselves. Most of the teachers I learned from insisted on demonstrating and practicing with the students. They also insisted on the students feeling the techniques demonstrated upon them by the teacher so that they might better understand the force and mechanics behind the techniques.
For those of you who care to read a far more eloquent and detailed article on this topic, Mr. Dan Miller wrote a very good one in the final issue of his Ba Gua Journal.
