Three years for small success, ten years to become a living immortal!

Qi Magazine - Issue 36 (1998)

By Michael Tse

How do you find a good teacher? A lot of this is to do with fate.When you open a magazine all the advertisements say how good this teacher is, or how that one is a grandmaster who can open up the secrets of a skill to you. Often they will tell you how many days or weeks it will take for you to become a Qigong master, how they will open your Sky-eye (Third-eye), and how they will teach you to transmit Qi to heal people. They all look like adverts on TV, and some even say,“Money back guarantee if you are not completely satisfied!” These advertisements do not promote any teachers. They only promote commercialism.

A good way to find a teacher is to go and see the person. Then you need to ask yourself how you feel about him/her. You have to look at how they behave and the condition of their health. Whether you want to study Qigong, or the martial art of taijiquan, a good teacher will behave well and look very healthy. They should be able to answer your questions so you can understand. If they can do this, then their knowledge is clear, and so their skill should also be good. If this is the case you can probably study with them.

You should also look at the senior students, people who have been studying for over three years. See how they behave, because if you eventually study with this teacher you will most likely become very similar. Recently, a student studied with me for about one year and then left. Probably she felt she wanted to learn more things more quickly and so she went to another Qigong master.

Then suddenly, after another year had gone, she appeared in my class and asked me how to prevent someone whose energy was very strong from effecting her. I told her that no one could affect you if you do not want to be affected. She replied, “He is very strong and I cannot get rid of him.” So I told her that going to another place might help. However, when I saw her later she looked tired and worried, and all her Qi had gone. At first, I knew she was too eager to develop her Qi. When she had been studying for only three months, she came to me and said she wanted to teach Qigong. I told her she was not ready. Then, when she had almost finished the form, she left. It seems to me that she just wanted to develop Qi and not the skill. Afterwards she ended up with another teacher, someone who she thought would teach her the power of Qi. She decided to study this skill and finally ended up disturbed.

Studying Qigong should be done step by step. When the time is right, everything will happen. There is a saying, “Three years for small success, ten years to become a living immortal!” It just takes time. Anything that happens quickly can easily result in side effects. You need to be patient. Just practice everyday, there’s no hurry.