day 74: ball qi-gong

concepts:

• breathing
• counting
• wen
• wu
  

forms:

• Yang simplified 24 movement
• Yang tai chi ball qi-gong
  

i missed the Thursday class this week, since i was preparing for my dissertation defense. so i only have material from Tuesday. i'm guessing the Thursday class introduced the bowl qi-gong, which i remember from the seminar last spring. but i'll have to check with Sifu when i get back to class.

day 74

we spent about half the class performing the Yang simplified 24 movement form. Sifu did it with us 1 time, then had us do it on our own as a group while he watched.

he then told us that we should time our breathing with the movements in the form, and that it can be done on a 2-count, with 1 being an inhale and 2 being an exhale. he demonstrated this with some of the initial movements, counting 1 & 2 for each movement. he said we should do this for learning purposes to become accustomed to matching our breathing with the form, and that eventually we should be able to do naturally it without the counting.

he led us through the entire form, using the 2-count to synchronize our breathing. after doing this twice, he asked us to do the form on the 2-count on our own, while he silently followed. he stopped us at a number of points where we were unsure of the count--most notably high pat on horse leading into boxing ears, the right & left kicks, and on weaver shuttling the loom.

Sifu noted that the pace of the movements helps set the rate of breathing, so that we can slow our breathing by slowing the movement. this helps to concentrate on the breathing, and also allows deeper breathing using the diaphragm and lower abdomen.

after a short break, we did a review of the ball qi-gong, but with more detail about the nature of wen (palms facing inward, expanding as the ball expanded with the person breathing out) versus wu (palms facing outward, pushing as the ball expanded with the person breathing out).

from last week (reference: days 71 & 72), we had got essentially 4 variations of tai chi qi-gong:

• static, wen
• static, wu
• dynamic, wen
• dynamic, wu
  

today Sifu said we can vary these, to get varying levels of intensity. we can adjust the size of the expanding ball to increase or decrease the depth of the breathing, and thereby work on lung capacity and slower or faster movements. we can also adjust the depth of the horse stance in the dynamic qi-gong to increase or decrease blood circulation and heart rate.

we went through all 4 variations of qi-gong to sense the differences. after this, we finished the day with stances.