I was reminded last night about the power and sheer number of 'circles' within my Kung Fu training. They are everywhere and are the power of a lot of our techniques. Not only do circles flow smoothly, they are able to exert power with very little effort. It reminds me of the importance of thinking while I'm teaching. Even as a lowly student who helps out in teaching when need be, it's easy to go into an auto pilot mode. You start doing without thinking. This is a good thing when using your techniques - achieving a state of no-mind, but even then you need to be actively 'creating in the moment'. The same is true when teaching.
It is interesting to learn just how much of a reflection teaching is to learning. As a teacher you need to do the exact same things you do as a student. You learn to flow, you learn to create in the moment, you learn to move on to the next technique when your strategy fails and you need to do so in the moment. The path of teacher/student is itself a circle.
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