Upper, medium and lower capacity

''An aspirant with upper capacity seeks to learn with his own body and mind; as aspirant of medium capacity seeks to learn through words; an aspirant of lower capacity seek to learn through techniques''.
This is what a Taoist sage said about the path for spiritual enlightenment. I think it equally applies to learners of Tai Chi.
Tai Chi as an internal martial art can only be learned through applying every single cell of the body. A teacher is necessary only as a guide to show the way, the journey has to be travelled by the students themselves. A Tai Chi form may be learned within months or even weeks; but to do it well on all levels with complete awareness requires dedicated practice of years and even a whole lifetime. A good practitioner performs his form not only with his limbs, but with his mind, spirit, heart and belly; he practices until every single cell of his body begins to chime with the ebb and flow of the Chi within. Whatever the teacher teaches in class should be taken away by students as guide for their own practice after class. For each single hour the teacher taught, at least 10 hours of practice should be carried out by the student. A teacher's job is not to serve the dish on a plate, but to show students a recipe, the right ingredients to use, and the method of cooking it. To use another analogy, Tai Chi learning is like building a house; the teacher's role is to teach learners how to use various tools and  skills required for building a house - laying down a foundation, building the frames, putting walls in, putting the roof on top and plastering, interiors, etc. In other words, a teacher is not there to build a house for his students, but to show him the way forward. A good Tai Chi student will take instructions from his teacher and put them into practice applying his body and mind 100% never trying to look for excuses.
A student with medium capacity will not put in effort 100% but likes to look for quick solutions through books or words. Or he would demand that the teacher come up with a fully comprehensible and logical answer to all the questions he asks about Tai Chi practice. He wants to hear everythings in words from his teacher rather than trying to find the answer himself through his own practice.
The worst type of student would deludes himself by thinking that if he be shown some really clever techniques, he can avoid putting in long hours of practice to improve his practice. Such students often end up wandering from teacher to teacher, from workshop to workshop in the hope of picking up some shortcut or advanced techniques. I can assure them that such techniques DO NOT exist. Sure there are advanced techniques, but they can only be learned once firm foundation work has been laid and they invarioubly require dedication and hardwork to become effective.
''Cleverly holding on to the leaves is not as good as foolishly sticking to the roots'' -- Zhang San-feng