Oh, and no matter which art you pick, the most important question is, how do you find a teacher who knows what they're doing, if you have no previous experience with the art they're teaching?
Some of the things to look at:
- If they have been teaching for a while, have they taught anyone to the point where that person became a teacher? A lot of people call themselves Sifu's - but technically, a Sifu means 'grandfather', which means it's someone who has taught someone else to be a teacher, preferably more than once.
- How long do their students stay with them? Do they keep progressing, or is there a high turnover rate? Is there a good spread of skill ranges in their classes (indicating that new people are joining, and old students are sticking around to progress), or do all their students seem to max out at a certain phase (if they have been teaching for 10 years, but none of the students in their class have been there longer than 2, that's a bad sign).
- What's their teaching style? Do they explain things in detail, or are they more of the 'do as I do' school? Do they leave you to figure it out on your own? Do they invite questions? Do they give meaningful answers, or fall back on mysticism or tradition as explanations?
- When they give an explanation, try to actually test it and apply it with another student, and if it doesn't work, keep pushing the teacher until it makes sense. A good teacher will tailor the answers to the student's understanding level, you should never leave class confused or unclear about the proper application of what you're learning - if you are unclear about what you're training, you are wasting time, because you can't actually tell whether you're training the right thing, and thus, you can't tell if you're improving.
- Invite a couple of their students for a coffee and pick their brains about their experiences attending that class. Listen for things they say as well as what they don't say.
Good luck.