Question:

Please! I need a personal mentor/instructor that can teach me Northern Shaolin/Tai Chi. i live in Michigan!!!

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i really need a personal instructor who is patient but strict. He/She also has to be wise and very experienced. I can't go out of state and i live in michigan. Kind of a Karate Kid type of ordeal. I am hoping I don't have to pay but I understand if a REASONABLE fee is requested. I would love if the instructor took me under their wing as an apprentice-sort-of-student. Like passing down a tradition or a legacy. If you are this instructor or you know someone who might be interested, please let me know asap!!!

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4 ANSWERS


  1. We have a regional representative that can help you find the legitimate instructor you seek.  Please write to ynkyinc@earthlink.net with your request.


  2. You want competent instruction, you should look for a schoo affiliated with a HUGE organization.  Plenty of "wise mentors" in such places, but in recent years that sort of relationship does not really exist anymore, and I do not wish to break your heart or smash your hopes here but, even in China, Japan, Korea and Okinawa themselves.  The only way to receive one on one instruction, is to earn it.  Because so many people are interested in martial arts, with few willing to go the distance, most high level instructors, 5th dans and higher, simply do not have the time to train people one on one.  The only way to receive it, is to join the biggest martial arts organization you can find, work hard, and by the time you earn a high ranking belt (black above 1st degree), it will catch people's attention, and you may earn your right to train one on one with a "mentor" figure.

    In the real world, such situations are rare.  I will reasure you and tell you that no competent martial arts instructor plays favorites, reason being favoritism isn't going to help you much at the "moment of truth."  In the U.S. school system, teachers deliberately grade down kids they do not like to discourage them from studying, while grading easy kids they like to encourage them, and who they encourage and discourage is dependent on their parent's educational attainment.  You will see that sometimes, in martial arts schools; in some dojos I have been told, instructors don't pull their punches on "wimps" they don't want in their school, while they take it easy and are all warm like towards sociopaths who are just like they are.  As they say, "like attracts like."  Myself personally I did not have this misfortune, but I thought I'd warn you about it to stay away from independently run schools.  Schools afiliated with larger organizations bend over backwards to prevent bullying and misconduct, if they did not, they would not be as big as they are.  Also in this era of lawsuits, big organizations are the most vulnerable, so you can be assured of your safety there.

    Here is the general rundown; you have a big name, say, Tae Kwan Do studio somewhere, afiliated with the WTKDF (World Tae Kwan Do Federation.  One thousand people will be white belts, but out of that 1,000, only 100 will become black belts.  The majority of people never go the distance, as a result most instructors are generally jaded, and with the lower ranking belts just sort of go through the motions.  They have this attitude, pretty much everywhere in the world, sorry to reveal this to you, but its the same everywhere that has a chapter of a given world wide organization.  If you want to catch their attention, you have to earn your black belt.  If you want a mentor figure, again, you have to earn your black belt.

    While not as favoritist and elitist as the world of academia, the martial arts world is no less arduous.  The higher up you go, the fewer and fewer people you will see in the same rank as you are.  Its not a joke, or an exageration; all the 10th dans really DO know each other!  In China all the "grand dragons" REALLY ARE all friends!  Reason that is, not very many of them.

    Look, don't feel sad or dejected, you can still have a mentor if you work hard to prove yourself and stick with it.  Its not like in the movies, and its not like in the old days; in modern martial arts, you have to earn your mentor, he/she simply isn't goint to show up one day and take pity on you.  Some instructors have trained for long enough to know, who is going to stick with it for the long stretch, and who isn't.  No joke, especially the older black belts who have trained hundreds; just from looking at you, they can tell whether you will become a black belt, or wash out by brown belt testing time.  Just from looking at you.

    They make it a point in fact, not to train their favorite people, but instead, they will do the opposite; people whom they see as having ability, they will brutalize even worse than the others in terms of looking for flaws in their form, telling them to do their pushups, etc.  It is an unwritten rule in martial arts going back hundreds of years; if you like a particular student, you are not nice to them, you are stricter with them than with everyone else.  In other words the learning environment is different from the classroom.

    Still, good luck.


  3. I am hoping I don't have to pay  

  4. where in michigan do you live ?free i dont think but know some reasonable priced in grand rapids area

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