day 231: a return to kyudo

concepts:

• shooting

lessons:

• kyudo

there was no formal kung fu class this week, since sifu was in Canada to give a seminar. but i went to the park anyway, and joined up with a few other students for practice. we spent a few hours reviewing all the bagua forms we've done to date, with the exception of xiao kai men: 64 palms (sides A & B), the leg form, forest palm, and the fist form. this was good, since it turns out we'd forgotten a few elements and needed to take some time to sort things out. luckily, kieun had all my Youtube videos on his iPhone, and so we had immediate real-time adjudication to resolve our memory issues.

kyudo

this evening was my 1st time back to kyudo in quite a few months (at first, i thought it was 3, but now i think it's more like 4). i had quite a bit of trepidation, since 1) i'd been struggling just to get the bow and arrow into shooting position the last time i'd attended, 2) i hadn't practiced at all during the time i was away, and 3) i hadn't shot that many times to begin with during the months i had been in class.

what i found, however, was much better than i had any right to hope for...i struggled this evening with kisa (although, that was expected, and i know it's something i'll always need to work on), but everything else went dramatically better than any of the other times i've tried to shoot--the arrow didn't fall off the string, and i actually managed to shoot every arrow that i knocked. granted, i had form issues, and some breathing issues, but this evening went better than any of the previous times. i was, to be quite honest, shocked.

i suspect that a good part of the situation was that i came in with a different mental state and a different philosophical approach tonight.

i had gone on break because of some personal issues, issues which i know had been affecting my mental health, and i had told sensei before i had gone on break that i believed a lot of my problems in kyudo were related to my mental state. at that time, i told him that i was having a physical inability to open up and that my body was contracting inward because i thought my mind was contracting inward, as if i were trying to tighten up to hold onto something. this translated into poor posture, poor holding of the bow, poor execution of the form, and poor release. all together, it summed to an inability to shoot the bow and arrow.

since those issues have been resolved (at least well enough to move on), i felt that i had come tonight with a much lighter heart, and was no longer holding on to whatever baggage i had been holding onto before. i think this translated into a very different physical expression, with better posture, better holding of the bow, better execution of the form, and a better release. of course, this doesn't mean perfect, but certainly an improvement compared to what i'd been before the hiatus.

i also came with a different philosophy tonight. before the break, i'd been incredibly anxious over my difficulties with kyudo, and had taken to obsessing over details and nuances, with a goal of trying to set everything into a logical, distinct series of steps. i think this had let me to over-analyze and over-think what i was doing, with the effect that it was actually frustrating my execution of the form--sort of akin to a golfer taking a swing: you can break the swing down into its constituent components, but in order to swing well you eventually have to be able to swing without thinking about any of them. in other words: you have to see the forest for the trees.

this time, i'd decided that i was going to stop thinking about details and steps and components and form, but instead just do it--shoot the arrow. i recalled that last week when i had discussed my situation with sensei i had taken to describing my problem as like a fire, that would alight spontaneously to burn me, and that it did so because i had refused to let the problem go. during our conversation, i had said that i knew the solution was to let the problem go; at that time i had used the words: to let the waters run. tonight, that was what i had decided to do: let the waters run.

i don't know if i was entirely successful. but i do know that the results were better than before. and i do know that tonight, for perhaps the first time in my lessons in kyudo, i actually understood the concept of shooting without thinking about shooting--about doing the act of kyudo without actually thinking about the act of kyudo, to the extent that i could think not of the bow or the arrow but of just my mind and the target...not completely. but i could see it. at least a part of it.

which is a whole lot more than i saw before.

this was a positive night. i hope to find more.

day 230: preparing for tournament and chen pao quan

concepts:

• judging

lessons:

• trial jian shu rounds
• chen pao quan
  

the plan today was to start training judges for the jian shu competition at the Las Vegas tournament. sifu decided to also provide some additional teaching, with bagua basics for some of the new students and the very start of the chen pao quan form for me and Jo-san.

trial jian shu rounds

this was an imperative, since it is possible we are going to have a shortage of judges at the tournament. sifu wanted Shen, a new student and a current post-doc at UCLA, to get trained as a judge. we reviewed the rules with her, and then staged a mock jian shu match using actual tournament rules so she could see how the competition is run. i acted as the center judge, and everyone else was either competing or serving as line judges.

chen pao quan

sifu asked phunsak to start teaching the chen pao quan form to me and Jo-san. he's talked about chen tai chi and the position of the pao quan form in the curriculum before, so i won't go into here. he's also discussed the distinction between the chang quan pao quan and chen tai chi pao quan, which i've presented in prior posts, so i won't go into detail about it here either.

phunsak showed us the initial movements in the form, and we spent the remainder of class trying to get it down. it's a bit challenging, since there's some timing issues that are important to the techniques.

sifu also noted that the applications in pao quan have some slightly different approaches than the other tai chi forms. in the other chen forms, the movements tend to relate to throws and a good portion of the principles deal with proper structure. in pao quan, however, the movements tend to relate to strikes, with more principles dealing with power projection (i should note here that sifu has said pao quan exhibits a number of different forms of power projection: 1) spiralling/silk reeling energy, 2) explosive energy, 3) energy like a bow-and-arrow, and 4) energy like a catapult). in addition, the engagement distances are different, with the other chen forms involving closer ranges with the opponent (to deploy the throws), while pao quan uses greater ranges (to deploy strikes). furthermore, the pacing is different, with pao quan involving much greater use of broken rhythm. as a result, sifu said his opinion is that pao quan is an aspect of chen tai chi far more revelant to real fighting than the rest.

we finished with that, and took a long lunch.

day 229: move-in

concepts:

• elbow basics while moving

lessons:

• bagua elbow basics

this is a bit of a short post. we had a slightly abbreviated class, since the morning was spent helping sifu move into a house--yes, that's right moving.

sifu decided some time ago that he wasn't quite ready to retire, and certainly not enough to warrant finalizing his original plan to reside in Hawaii. he and his wife are returning to Southern California, although my understanding is that they're keeping the property in Hawaii.

a fair number of his students helped, with everyone bringing whatever larger vehicles they could find, making the move a fairly quick process of around 2-3 hours.

we wrapped up in time to have about 2 hours at the park. i ended up spending the time reviewing the bagua elbow basics--which is good, since my vacation essentially meant that i'd missed 3 weekends of classes on these, and i needed the practice. sifu also introduced to the moving basics (apparently, what we've done are only the elbow movements in a stationary stance, and today we learned to do them while moving along a line).

we finished around 1pm. there was no kyudo today, since it was July 4.

day 228 (sort of)

well, as i said on my other blog, i've been on a bit of a break and a vacation.  it was not entirely voluntary, but it was necessary.  i won't go into detail, but what info i'm willing to give i've posted at my Ironman blog:

http://jonathaninthedistance.blogspot.com/2009/06/vacation-and-return.html

i'm resuming the postings regarding my martial arts lessons here, although i have to be honest and point out that things have been very lackluster--partially because my heart was not in it (the lessons), and partly because i actually didn't go to class for awhile.  but now that things seem to be resolving themselves, i'll be trying to get back on a regular schedule here.

this past weekend was my 1st day back, and i made trips to both kung fu and kyudo.  Saturday was spent reviewing the elbow basics for bagua in prelude to the elbow form (they'd finished all of them while i'd been away, but the repetition was good for everyone, since it seems some people had already forgotten some of the basics).  the evening was a short visit to kyudo--i went more for the purpose of some spiritual guidance with Sensei, who is a Zen priest, and didn't stay to actually shoot.

my plan is to ease back into things, and gradually pick up at the pace i was at before.  bear with me, and i hope to provide some useful posts soon.

day 227: preconditions for chen

concepts:

• stomping
• whipping
• footwork
  

lessons:

• chen tai chi
• jian shu
  

this Sunday covered both tai chi and jian shu, with the bulk of time on chen tai chi.

chen tai chi

Sifu continued with the lesson plan he mentioned last time, having us work on some basic movements he considered preconditions before learning chen pao quan. today, he has us work on stomping, except that we were stomping while moving our hands and progressing along a line.

the movements we did today utilized the random circle movements we've learned before for the upper body, moving forward and backwards along a line. however, Sifu had us add the following:

1. while moving the arms and hands, we were to stomp with the forward foot. in terms of timing, this meant that the front foot would stomp down as the front hand reached its furthest point forward. if we were moving forward while we were stomping, this meant that the whipping motion involved the front hand whipping forward and down. if we were moving backwards, this meant the whipping hand motion going forward and up (Sifu said we'd be making a beckoning motion towards ourselves).
2. the arms and hands--not just the hands alone--were to be moving with a whipping motion, so that the greatest speed would be when they were moving forward, and the lowest speed when they were moving back.
   

Sifu said we could do these drills with variations, so that we could be stomping forwards as the whipping arm moved forward and up and stomping backwards as the whipping arm moved forward and down. for today, however, he wanted us to just concentrate as whipping forward and down as we stomped forward, and vice versa.

we did this for a while. it took a little time to get the timing right and the power apparent in the movements.

jian shu

jian shu dealt with more footwork elements. last time we'd covered 3 different footwork elements to add to sword techniques. today we added 2 more:

• triangle step (forward and back)
• angle step (forward and back)
  

i recognized these (as well as 2 of the 3 from before) to be the same footwork that we've learned before from the summer training sessions for sparring. this makes sense, since i remember we've had conversations before saying that many hand-to-hand combat methods in TCMA actually come from weapons methods.

Sifu had us do drills with the above footwork, holding the sword steady in right or left hands.

after we worked on this for awhile, he then discussed the general outline of sword movements, saying that they could be interpreted as 4 categories (note: my memory is a little rusty here, so it's entirely possible i'm referencing the wrong terms): jo (thrusting), suei (slashing), bai (parrying), guen (circular). he noted that all the 15 sword techniques (5 offensive, 10 defensive) could be viewed as belonging to any of these 4 categories.

we ended up talking about this classification system for awhile, and then reviewed the footwork drills a few more times before going home.

day 226: exploring the form

concepts:

• transitions

lessons:

• bagua fist form

the form is not the form. the way is not the way. or something like that. i've been juggling school/work (for me the same thing), recovering from the flu (no longer contagious!), and coming back on the conditioning trail. i had to miss kyudo again this week to deal with the start of some on-line classes i'm teaching--this is getting on a little longer than i'd like, but i've become of the opinion certain confluences of events are usually indicative of certain destinies in outcomes, that this may be a reflection of what was meant to be at this point in time...but i expect things to return here eventually, as they always do (just like in surfing...the waves come in sets, and if miss the break between sets, it's better to wait for the next one before paddling out into the ocean, or otherwise you'll find yourself fighting a long procession of smack-downs with nothing to show for it except a lot of water).

bagua fist form

Sifu told us today that he wanted us to begin thinking more deeply about the bagua fist form. he's shown us the applications up to now, but this time he says he wanted us to see all the variations in applications--except that he not only wants us to not only develop understanding of the applications, but also to develop the ability to see the variations of applications for ourselves. he noted that it's important to be able to figure things out on your own, and that this is a skill that requires practice.

to accomplish this objective, Sifu ran class as a pop quiz. he told us to try and figure out the differing applications in the form on our own, and he'd return to check and see what we'd found. he asked us to emphasize applications coming out of the transitions between techniques, so that we could see that the transitions are more than just transitions, but actually fighting tools in themselves. for now, he told us to just concentrate on the first 18-20 movements of the form.

we spent the bulk of the remaining class time working on this, trying to interpret the movements in the form into different applications. Sifu came back a few times to check on our progress, correcting things that he thought were misinterpretations or identifying applications that wouldn't work. i won't go through them all here, since there were too many and everything was largely speculative.

this session was useful, in terms of learning how to see the potential applications of movements and understanding what they showed regarding the underlying nature of the fist form. beyond this, it was also good in that it showed that the form is not just a form, but a library of hints regarding differing interpretations in the movements of the form.

day 225: sick

i didn't go to kung fu or kyudo this past weekend.

i was sick.

a bad case of the flu.

bleah.

day 224: reconstructing drills

concepts:

• gai bu
• tuei bu
• bei bu
  

lessons:

• chen tai chi

i'm so sick right now i can't even remember what we did last week. i have some vague recollections about last Sunday, but it's a fog.

chen tai chi

we spent the class dealing with chen tai chi. Sifu had us work on moving cloud hands--basically cloud hands, but integrating more footwork, and in pairs. he had us do drills in pairs, involving footwork, which were as follows:

• bei bu (sic?)--i forgot the exact name, so this is probably wrong. basically, it's the shuffle step where the front foot slides first and the rear foot then slides second. we did this in pairs, with both partners facing each other, and then going backwards. the aim was to do cloud hands (using just the hand facing the opponent, and in contact with their hand) as we did the footwork.
• tuei bu (sic?)--ditto, i can't remember the exact name. this is another shuffle step, except that the rear foot slides first and then the front foot slides out second, giving the impression of a slight skip. the partner drill was the same as the above.
• gai bu (sic?)--ditto. this involved the front foot rising up first, and then hopping slightly w the rear foot before moving forward to land with both feet on the ground. the partner drill was the same as above.
  

we spent the class repeating these drills.

day 223: production set

concepts:

• rules

lessons:

• bagua
• jian shu

this Saturday was a bit rushed and hurried. Sifu wanted to film material for a DVD on jian shu, and so the morning class had to be abbreviated to allow enough time to get over the UCLA, where we were shooting the video for the afternoon. of course, this meant that between driving to UCLA and dealing with carpooling issues and equipment logistics, i missed the kyudo class. i'll try again next week.

bagua

we spent the morning reviewing the fist form, and helping people who've missed lessons catch up. this lasted about 90 minutes, at which point Sifu said we needed to make the trip over to UCLA.

jian shu

i carpooled with Phunsak over to UCLA. we spent the afternoon shooting video illustrating the various jian shu rules. we finished around 5pm.

Phunsak ended up being able to make the kyudo class, since he had all the equipment with him in his car. as for me, i had to have him drop me off to pick up my car, and then i had to get back to apartment to get my equipment. with that, and the unexpected phone call from my mother (which, as you know, no one can ever ignore), i ended up being so late (about 90 minutes late) that i figured it was pointless to go to kyudo class and just shelve things for the day.

day 222: that funny tai chi and funny bagua and funny ground

concepts:

• reaction forces
• drills
  

lessons:

• tai chi
• bagua
  

this Saturday was a bit different. i arrived a little late (school material, errands, and traffic), and found class had started with a review of the bagua fist form. there were, however, 4 additional students (2 new, but also 2 who had apparently known Sifu from the 1980s and had now come back), and they were working with Sifu on tai chi. this made for a busy park, since we now had 3 different lessons going on (bagua, baji, and tai chi), with Sifu going back and forth between them.

after a little time reviewing the bagua fist form, Sifu called us over to join the tai chi lesson, saying that he was going over some concepts that were relevant to bagua, and that we needed to review even though we'd had them before.

tai chi

the new students were going through the basics of chen tai chi. they'd been doing the static random circles, but now were starting the moving random circles (i.e., with lower body work in terms of dynamic stances and footwork). Sifu said that the principles of receiving and redirecting force is not something done with just the arms or hands, but requires integration of those elements with the torso and lower body. in addition, he stressed that the ability to maintain stability, position, and project power also relied on the torso and lower body.

to start, he had us worth with random circles in dynamic stances, transitioning from horse stance to bow-and-arrow. as he has done before, he stressed the grinding action of the feet, emphasizing the need to feel that you are driving them into the ground. to stress the importance of this, he performed his common demonstration of controlling someone by holding their fist, contrasting what happens when you don't send your force into the ground (the technique fails) versus when you do (the technique works). he then asked us to spend some time to learn this, since it's a crucial component in tai chi.

i've had problems with this before. i've gotten frustrated with this. but this time, with Ching-Chieh's help, i finally figured it out--or at least, figured it out enough to know how to make it work.

the main problem for me is that this is a new motion, with new types of physics, and so hard to figure out (i.e., it's hard to learn something when you don't know what it is that you're trying to learn). it's also very difficult to describe to someone who's never experienced it before (like me). the analogy is how do you describe the color blue to someone who's blind?).

typically, i've heard terms like "sending chi into the ground" or "sending energy down" or "grounding" or "grinding" or "focusing down". Sifu has used the term "reaction force" with the ground. alternatively, we've also talked about "centering" or "driving". but again, the issue for me had been how to equate this to the proper body mechanics--mechanics which i've never employed before.

today, however, i got things to work. i noticed that with Ching-Chieh i could sense when her body was tensing, and i could sense in what direction her body was going when it tensed--this is contrast with Sifu, who provides absolutely no clue as to what he's doing (unless he tells you). i suspect this may be one distinction between a master versus an adept.

what i realized is that all the terms can be interpreted as pushing through your body into the ground. the qualifier, however, is that you maintain your structure, and activate your muscle forces without folding your body. in addition, you have to direct all the force vectors through your feet (and it helps to think of it through the balls of the feet and the toes) into the ground. for me, it's akin to pushing off the ground, except that you don't do it to the extent that you lift yourself off (i.e., maintain your feet flat). so your body is doing work, but it's just not in a way that causes movement (i.e., it's the difference being still while flexing your muscles versus moving because you're flexing your muscles).

this is a bit different for me as an athlete. typically, the idea of pushing against the ground involves some action, like jumping or running or doing squats or lunges. this is very different from the principle here, in that all those kinds of sports-related activities involve folding and flexing the body (i.e., in a squat you fold at the hips and knees to go down). this is necessary for those kinds of activities. but for tai chi, you don't want to fold, since from a physics perspective this creates systemic inefficiencies reducing the force vector aimed down into the ground--in tai chi, you want to maximize efficiency to maximize the force vector, and to do this you have to maintain body structure and allow the entire body to accumulate a force vector directly through your feet.

i can see now that all these terms are entirely accurate. it was just that i had to relate it to something i knew. and it very much is a "reaction force" in a Newtonian physics vernacular, since the result of driving the force vector into the ground is to create a corresponding force vector back up (remember, Newtonian physics: for every force there is an equal and opposite force). which is why in tai chi it's desireable, because if done properly it means that whatever force the opponent sends into you goes directly into the ground, which in turn means that you can literally use the opponent's force against him.

truth is, this isn't just tai chi. from what i can tell, this principle is true to any of the internal martial arts. for that matter, it's true for any martial art. which actually gave me quite some things to think about--i ended up spending the remainder of the class trying to apply this in review of the bagua fist form.

bagua

Sifu broke us off into groups again, with the bagua students resuming the fist form. this time, however, he continued with refining the applications, particularly the opening sequence of fists. before, we learned these as being any choice of punches or take-downs. today, Sifu said we needed to work on using them as entries. he demonstrated how they worked, and then showed us a drill to learn how to use them as entries.

essentially, the drill shows that the turning/twisting/reeling (chan szieh jin) motions of the fists can serve to sense and receive opponent's strikes (ting jing and hwa jing). following the form, which has the first fist being immediately followed by the next, the drill shows that the fists can then act to open holes enabling penetration of our own strikes (na jing and fa jing).

Sifu stressed that the following:

• do not to punch or strike--this only creates yang-on-yang contact, which only results in us hurting ourselves. he said to stay soft as long as possible, and only apply force (or tense up) at the last moment (and even then, you can often apply the techniques successfully without having to apply force--see the points below).
• when converting a fist into an entry, continue to use the turning/reeling/twisting motion to direct the opponent into an unstable position. you want to destabilize their structure and open their gate. this means sending them in a yin direction (down or back or up or turning away)
• to use a fist as an entry, imagine the extended fist as a place-holder, and that you are moving into the place that it is holding. this allows you to enter the opponent's space, and thereby take their center, and once you've taken their center you have control (na jing)--but note that this can't happen until you've destabilized their structure.
  

we finished class with the drills. class went long today, with things not wrapping up until around 2:30. once we realized the time, we decided to take lunch.

i had to skip kyudo class today. i was swamped with things at school, particularly with grading, grade appeals, prepping lecture, and setting up classes for next quarter. and the fact that kung fu had gone long made it even more pressing for me to get to work. i'm hoping that i can get my head far enough above water that i can get back to kyudo next week (cross my fingers).