Payton Swick, Instructor

Certifications

Energy Gates Chi Gung - Level 1

Bio

“It took several years of doing tai chi before I realized I was really feeling something that I didn't know how to explain-call it energy,” says Short Form instructor Payton Swick, “and that's when I was hooked.” He has been studying tai chi about eight years and teaching at least two. As part of the original apprenticeship program when Brookline Tai Chi turned nonprofit four years ago, Payton volunteered learning time-several years, he thinks; “it's hard to say when apprenticeship ended.” Student apprentices started off observing senior teachers, then discussing, assisting, co-teaching, solo teaching. “The more involved I got in this practice, the more I wanted to share what has completely changed my life.”

Over the years he has charted tai chi's influence in the form of moments of self-awareness creeping into his daily life, with two main effects. He realized how much his IT work at Boston College, sitting at a computer all day, was affecting his posture and became able to selfcorrect-” much to the amusement of my co-workers,” as he practiced tai chi routines in lieu of coffee breaks. And he realized how getting into the tai chi mindset allowed him to dissolve stress and also manipulate his energy level. Using tai chi walking as a meditation practice became a staple of his routine.

“You don't learn this the way you would algebra,” he says, “by memorizing and repeating.” His own teaching approach has evolved from initially “going by the book, mimicking senior instructors” to being able to tune into other people's learning ablity and gauge what they can absorb, “not giving too little and not giving too much.” “That's probably the hardest part of teaching,” he says. “Age” is a main factor he sees playing into a student's readiness to absorb, in the sense that “everyone in our society, and I'm no exception, has spent an entire life training our bodies to have poor alignments.” We're conditioned to follow what feels familiar, not what feels truly good, he says. The work of tai chi is “to retrain your body and your nervous system to make what feels truly good, feel normal.”