They Have To Experience It

The Master doesn’t talk, he acts.
When his work is done,
the people say, “Amazing: we did it, all by ourselves!” -Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tzu (Stephen Mitchell translation)

“When the mind is free of any thought or judgment, it is still and acts like a mirror. Then and only then can we know things as they are.” -Timothy Gallwey, book The Inner Game Of Tennis

For the director or coach or teacher (or parent)…

You can talk until you’re blue in the face, but until they directly experience it for themselves, your corrective talk is meaningless.

The greatest thing you can do is lead the person to a place where they can truly watch and see what they’re doing. No judgment from you or them. Just watching. You both participate together in the discovery. That’s how they’ll make the breakthrough they seek.

In his masterpiece, “The Inner Game Of Tennis”, author Timothy Gallwey describes a lesson with his student, Jack. Jack had struggled for years to improve his backhand. He went to many teachers and took many lessons.

Instead of instructing with words, Gallwey had Jack simply watch his backswing in a mirror, and describe to Gallwey what he saw. Without judgment and without castigating himself. Jack was surprised, almost childlike, by seeing that he was, in fact, taking his racket back too high. Then after making this discovery, Jack was able to instantly correct his stroke.

An excerpt from the book that describes this encounter…

I asked Jack to take a few swings on the patio where we were standing. His backswing started back very low, but then, sure enough, just before swinging forward it lifted to the level of his shoulder and swung down into the imagined ball. The five pros were right. I asked him to swing several more times without making any comment. “Isn’t that better?” he asked. “I tried to keep it low.” But each time just before swinging forward, his racket lifted; it was obvious that had he been hitting an actual ball, the underspin imparted by the downward swing would have caused it to sail out.

“Your backhand is all right,” I said reassuringly. “It’s just going through some changes. Why don’t you take a closer look at it.” We walked over to a large windowpane and there I asked him to swing again while watching his reflection. He did so, again taking his characteristic hitch at the back of his swing, but this time he was astounded. “Hey, I really do take my racket back high! It goes up above my shoulder!” There was no judgment in his voice; he was just reporting with amazement what his eyes had seen.

What surprised me was Jack’s surprise. Hadn’t he said that five pros had told him his racket was too high? I was certain that if I had told him the same thing after his first swing, he would have replied, “Yes, I know.” But what was now clear was that he didn’t really know, since no one is ever surprised at seeing something they already know. Despite all those lessons, he had never directly experienced his racket going back high. His mind had been so absorbed in the process of judgment and trying to change this “bad” stroke that he had never perceived the stroke itself.

Looking in the glass which mirrored his stroke as it was, Jack was able to keep his racket low quite effortlessly as he swung again. “That feels entirely different than any backhand I’ve ever swung,” he declared. By now he was swinging up and through the ball over and over again. Interestingly, he wasn’t congratulating himself for doing it right; he was simply absorbed in how different it felt.

After lunch I threw Jack a few balls and he was able to remember how the stroke felt and to repeat the action. This time he just felt where his racket was going, letting his sense of feel replace the visual image offered by the mirror. It was a new experience for him. Soon he was consistently hitting topspin backhands into the court with an effortlessness that made it appear this was his natural swing. In ten minutes he was feeling “in the groove,” and he paused to express his gratitude. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you’ve done for me. I’ve learned more in ten minutes from you than in twenty hours of lessons I’ve taken on my backhand.” I could feel something inside me begin to puff up as it absorbed these “good” words. At the same time, I didn’t know quite how to handle this lavish compliment, and found myself hemming and hawing, trying to come up with an appropriately modest reply. Then, for a moment, my mind turned off and I realized that I hadn’t given Jack a single instruction on his backhand! “But what did I teach you?” I asked. He was quiet for a full half-minute, trying to remember what I had told him. Finally he said, “I can’t remember your telling me anything! You were just there watching, and you got me watching myself closer than I ever had before. Instead of seeing what was wrong with my backhand, I just started observing, and improvement seemed to happen on its own. I’m not sure why, but I certainly learned a lot in a short period of time.” He had learned, but had he been “taught”? This question fascinated me.”

I can’t describe how good I felt at that moment, or why. Tears even began to come to my eyes. I had learned and he had learned, but there was no one there to take credit. There was only the glimmer of a realization that we were both participating in a wonderful process of natural learning. The key that unlocked Jack’s new backhand—which was really there all the time just waiting to be let out—was that in the instant he stopped trying to change his backhand, he saw it as it was. At first, with the aid of the mirror, he directly experienced his backswing. Without thinking or analyzing, he increased his awareness of that part of his swing. When the mind is free of any thought or judgment, it is still and acts like a mirror. Then and only then can we know things as they are.