When Teaching Gets Smaller
For many years, teaching had a way of becoming larger.
A useful idea could become an article.
The article could become a lesson.
The lesson could become part of a course.
Then there might be another course, a membership, a newsletter, a schedule, or some other way of continuing the work.
None of that was necessarily a problem.
Much of it was worthwhile. I enjoyed teaching, and I am grateful for the people I met through it.
But over time, teaching became surrounded by more and more machinery.
There was always something else to create, organize, publish, maintain, or promote.
Eventually, the machinery could become louder than the thing I had wanted to share in the first place.
When I stopped doing most of that work, I sometimes wondered what teaching would look like without all the structure around it.
Did a useful idea need to become a program?
Did an exercise need to belong to a course?
Did teaching require a schedule?
Did I need to keep producing something new simply because people were listening?
I don't think so anymore.
Teaching can become smaller too.
It can be one idea shared clearly.
One reflection.
One practice.
One explanation that helps someone see something differently.
It does not always need somewhere else to go.
This is part of what I am experimenting with on Smaller Practice.
I have spent much of my life practicing and teaching Tai Chi and Qigong.
There are still things from those years that I think are worth sharing.
There are also things I am noticing now as my own practice changes.
But I don't want to rebuild the kind of teaching structure I once had. I don't want every subject to become a curriculum. I don't want to create material simply because a schedule says something is due. And I don't want teaching to depend on me remaining constantly at the center of it.
I would rather share something when there is something worth sharing.
Then let it stand on its own.
That changes the relationship between teacher and student too.
A large teaching system often has a direction built into it.
Start here.
Continue here.
Complete this level.
Move on to the next one.
Keep going.
There can be real value in that kind of structure, especially when someone is learning a complex skill.
But not everything needs it.
Sometimes a person already has a practice.
Sometimes they have decades of experience.
Sometimes they need one useful reminder more than they need another system to follow.
And sometimes a reflection is enough.
I find myself more interested in that kind of teaching now.
Not teaching someone everything I know. Not trying to take them from beginner to advanced. Not trying to keep them moving through a sequence I designed.
Just sharing something that may be useful where they are.
Perhaps it is an idea I have carried for years.
Perhaps it is something I have only recently noticed.
Perhaps it is an old practice that still seems worth keeping.
Or perhaps it is simply a different way of looking at something familiar.
That can still be teaching.
Smaller teaching does not have to mean caring less about what is taught.
It may mean giving one useful thing enough attention, then allowing it to be enough.
No need to turn every idea into a program. No need to make every lesson lead to another lesson. No need for the teacher to remain at the center of everything that follows.
Share what seems worth sharing.
Make it as useful as you can.
Then leave some room for the person receiving it to decide what happens next.
That feels like a smaller way of teaching.
These days, it also feels like enough.