Bill Robertson, Instructor

When he first started doing tai chi almost ten years ago, it was as though he was moving elbows, knees, and other joints like a stick figure, Bill Robertson says. “I had virtually no connection with my body.” He noticed recently that he's now “feeling more of my body at once,” even internal organs, and can tell where the various parts are “without having to look.” Bill has been teaching tai chi Short Form for more than two years. He was one of the original “home-grown” advanced students turned instructors who followed BTC's first apprenticeship program. Teaching beginners has had a lot to do with transforming his own practice, he says. “I thought early on, I'd better know what I'm doing if only not to embarrass myself.” After years of Long Form, he had to relearn the Short Form in order to teach. ”Fortunately,” he says, “all the teachers here are such a huge resource, not just for students but for other teachers as well. You can go to any of them and ask how to address whatever students ask you that you don't know.”

A part of teaching he especially likes is when a student's eyes open wide at some small epiphany and they say, 'Oh, that's what you were talking about.' “To see them make some small body connection really makes my day.” In his day job of 25 years, doing computer technical support at Boston University, he also fields a lot of questions from people trying to grasp complex things.

Another constantly “good thing” is finding tai chi “a perfect tool for an ongoing struggle with my ego. It continually teaches me, 'You're not perfect and won't ever be, and thinking you ought to be is not going to help.' ” A co-worker told him recently, though, that he has become more calm about dealing with problems. This he takes as a sign of tai chi working its way inward. “We don't stay stick figures,” he says. “Practicing feeling awareness lets us draw the entire body in all its texture and detail. Maybe that's why we call this an art?”