Shifu Chen Zhonghua often emphasizes how to learn Taijiquan. This web site has a great article called 6 Methods of Learning Tai Chi. It expands and elaborates on Grandmaster Hong’s Look, Listen, Ask, Practice Method.
I am finishing a PhD in Exercise Science – Biomechanics at Auburn University. A related interest has been motor control, so I took as many of these courses as I could. From these courses, I learned there is a neurological basis for this method of learning.
In neurology there is a mechanism called a mirror neuron. When we see a person do something, mirror neuron fire off in our brain duplicating the pattern in the brain required to copy the movement. It is not a perfect copy at first, but with repeated viewing of the action, our brains do a really good job of copying the movement. Read more