Teaching from Center: What Tai Chi Taught Me About Presence in the Classroom

The Way Between

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Teaching from Center: What Tai Chi Taught Me About Presence in the Classroom

Teaching is one of the most unpredictable jobs in the world. What happens when balance, not control, becomes the guiding principle?

Years ago, I was substitute teaching in environments where the emotional weather could change in minutes. Each classroom carried its own tempo, expectations, and invisible rules. The question I kept returning to wasn’t “How do I control this room?” but “How do I become a steady presence inside it?”

Around that time, I was given the opportunity to train in Tai Chi. It was a way to train attention in motion, an embodied practice that could strengthen presence without requiring force. What I didn’t expect was how much that slow, deliberate movement would change how I moved through the classroom.

At first, I didn’t notice the connection. I simply noticed that the practice was changing my posture, my breathing, and the way I entered a room.

In the classroom, I began to teach with less urgency in my body. When tension or noise rose, I could feel my own impulse to tighten or rush. Tai Chi helped me soften that reflex. The practice wasn’t giving me a script; it was giving me a steadier nervous system.

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Tai Chi helped me notice something deeper: that presence is not passive. It’s an active form of care. It’s the ability to remain available to what’s happening without being pulled into the drama of it.

Sometimes strength meant holding firm. Other times it meant letting go. Tai Chi sharpened my sense of pacing, when to be direct, when to be quiet, and when to let the class find its own footing for a moment.

In the early days, I carried a constant anxiety about whether I was doing “enough” to keep a class on track.

Tai Chi didn’t give me perfect classroom management, but it gave me internal space. When a student acted out or the room started to buzz off track, I learned to pause long enough to choose my response, rather than defaulting to performance or pressure.

Over time, I also began to feel more attuned to the energy of a class. Some groups needed grounding; others needed to be lifted. The practice taught me to read a room with my whole body, not just my mind.

In the classroom, that meant knowing how much energy to bring without pushing too far. A gentle prompt could shift attention. A pause could calm the room. I started to trust the feeling of when to move and when to wait, when to redirect with subtlety and when to speak with more strength. That shift in pacing changed the emotional climate of my teaching.

Tai Chi remains one of the ways I rehearse calm, clarity, and patience, qualities that matter as much as content in any real learning environment.

I’m not looking for perfect control. I’m learning how to meet what’s in front of me with clarity and calm. Teaching will always bring surprises. But Tai Chi has helped me trust a simple truth: students often settle not because we command the room, but because we embody steadiness inside it.

Adam Dietz is a philosopher and educator exploring Eastern philosophy in daily life. Find more of his work on Insight Timer and at his Substack, The Way Between.