day 80: more theory (the music of fighting!), pao quan, chen tai chi, and kuen wu jian

concepts:

• free forms
• manipulating energy
  

forms:

• Chen tai chi (combat applications and long form)
• pao quan
• kuen wu jian
  

it was a cold Sunday morning, and things were a little rough to start. but we managed to get things going once the sun came out around 9:30am. this sunday was an extension of yesterday's saturday class (although, isn't any class just an extension of a previous class? i mean, from a pedagogical point of view? but this is a topic for another blog...).

we began with a continuation of the theory from yesterday. Sifu reminded us about the ways of recognizing structure (i.e., the "I" and yin-yang), and the ways to break it down (i.e., directing yin against yang, and vice versa, where yin is movement down, backwards, inwards, or insubstantial force/tension and yang is movement up, forwards, outwards, or substantial force/tension). he also reminded us of the notion of movement in whirlpools and tangents to the direction of rotation, with movement in varying planes and axes in space.

he then added to this with the admonition that we have to be free in our actions. by this, he means that we have to break our obsession with forms and techniques, and get away from thinking that a specific action in a form is only 1 technique with 1 application. this is a very simplistic way of thinking, and helpful for the initial stages of training (since it provides some idea of the intent behind the technique), but is dangerous in terms of combat applications, because it locks the practitioner into an mechanical algorithm of input/output (e.g., you read an opponent's action as input, which you process through the algorithmic function of varying techniques, and then produce output of your own reaction). this does not match the fluid, chaotic conditions of a fight, and rarely matches the speed and violence in a real encounter.

Sifu said that the forms and techniques are only meant to be guidelines to help us translate principles into practical application, and that we are meant to adjust and modify guidelines depending on the circumstances. he'd referenced this before (reference: day 73), but today we seemed to be going into more detail.

Sifu pointed out that the higher levels of fighting (he used the term "real fighting") is less about techniques and more about principles. he stressed that the over-arching principles we've been talking about (i.e., whirlpools, tangents, energies, inner/outer gates, centers, structure, yin-yang, relaxation, etc.) are central to martial arts--not just bagua, but in all forms of fighting, regardless of stylistic appearance or cultural origin. this is because they work...and they work because they utilize fundamental physics and biomechanics.

the issue, however, is understanding how to express these principles. this is why there are different styles of fighting, because they apply the principles in different ways. this is also why there is a "right" way and "wrong" way of techniques and forms. Sifu commented that we need to understand that "right" techniques and "right" forms are those that 1) respect the principles, and therefore 2) work. "wrong" techniques and "wrong" forms are that violate the principles and so do not work. Sifu noted that this is one of the criteria in determining if someone practices martial arts as self-defense--if they hold to the principles in their practice of martial arts, they are preserving it as a form of self-defense, otherwise they are just doing dancing.

Sifu said he wanted us to try and develop free form movement, with expressions of the forms that recognize the principles, but which are free and not held to any single application. he said we have to be more fluid, and do more than just identify a particular movement as a technique with 1 or 2 applications, so that we can see the movement as having a plethora of permutations with a legion of options to set up the application or to follow-up the application.

this clearly breaks any notion that 1 technique has 1 application. i also suspect that this is advances beyond the idea of specific techniques being broken down into categories like suai, da, na, ti, dien (reference: day 69). this seems to mean that the expression of techniques and forms are really just expressions of principles, and so are an expression of the practitioner's personality and creative sensibility with respect to using the principles.

this is consistent with things we've discussed in class, particularly with Sifu's constant stressing on the need for imagination in our movement. in order to operate in a chaotic environment like a fight, there needs to be a ability to adapt and operate in changing circumstances. this calls for fluidity in physical action and mental thinking. it also means a manner of creativity to bring about an outcome (preferably, our winning...or our survival) given the assets available to us and the conditions around us. this is what makes a "martial art" an art, in that it requires us to maintain creativity (ingenuity, resourcefulness, imagination) in terms of what to do and how to do it.

oddly enough, this is also consistent with some notes Sifu has stated as asides in the tai chi class. he's made a few comments about being able to recognize a student's teacher by watching the student's moves, since the student always picks up their teacher's habits, and each teacher always expresses a certain personality in their habits (his words). he's also said that our personality comes out in our movements (which is logical enough, albeit interesting). i'm guessing this means that our movements also indicate the nature of our creativity, as much as creativity is a part of personality. which further demonstrates how much a martial art is an art, in that it becomes an expression of who we are.

this makes me wonder if you can tell a person's character by the way they practice a martial art, and by the way they fight...i also recall research papers published in a British sports medicine journal that investigated if physical training can adjust a person's character (don't laugh--they were following the theory used by tai chi, which has always been termed as a "moving meditation", suggesting that tai chi can alter a person's demeanor). this is something for another post, and another time.

on a side note, i'm starting to see all this as analogous to music, particularly in terms of improvisation group music done in jazz. in jazz, musicians frequently play in a free-form combination, wherein they play with no sheet music or set songs, but instead just play whatever they want to play, with the only guiding principle that the resulting product of the entire group "swings" (i.e., it sounds good and makes sense). this is considered an expression of musical mastery, since it requires a supreme command of 1) the instrument, 2) the nature of tone, pitch, notes, and assembly of notes, 3) the ability to recognize what other musicians are doing, 4) making your own music to match other musicians, and 5) creating, adjusting, modifying what you do and what other people do, so that you can all go spontaneously in new directions as a group. sometimes the group will incorporate a recognizable pattern, sometimes they will extend the pattern into new forms, other times they will have no recognizable pattern at all but generate their own.

this is not random--it is fluid, it is changing, but it is not random. nor is it chaotic. rather, you can sense purpose and you can sense pattern, and you can definitely sense personality. the only constant is manipulation of principles in creative ways to produce a coherent and substantive expression of the self unique to the moment in time (time and imagination...from the UCLA tai chi class, get it? ha ha ha, yuck yuck yuck, but you get my point).

this analogy is often used in fluid team sports like soccer and basketball, where players have to work together and against each other, even as people move in unplanned and constantly changing directions. when playing well, the actions are constantly changing, but they have a purpose and pattern that shows they are not random acts of chaos. i'm starting to think the same is true of a fight...it's a situation just as fluid, just as dependent on interaction, just as subject to surrounding conditions, and just as expressive of personality.

Chen tai chi long form

Sifu ordered us to try and apply the techniques in the Chen long form. he said he wanted to see if we could recognize the principles in the form, and also wanted to see the ways we saw how those principles are expressed in terms of applications (i suspect he wanted to see how many different applications we could come up with from each technique, and see if we recognized that all the different applications were still using the same principles).

we spent a while going through a number of movements in the long form, working in pairs to try and figure things out. Sifu went around to watch us, and then correcting our actions by identifying the intent we were trying to express and then adjusting our motions so that they applied the principles to produce outcomes matching our intent.

after this, he had us then work on going beyond just single techniques with single applications. instead, he told us to become more interactive and operate in sequences, so that as 1 partner attempted to apply a technique the partner would react, forcing the 2 into a sequence of actions of action/reaction. Sifu showed us how this can produce a series of actions about the same principles, so that the movements follow one after another in a free form that alters depending on the interaction between the partners.

Sifu pointed out that this ultimately, at its most fundamental level of physics and biomechanics, really becomes nothing more than just the manipulation of energy--your own, your partner's, and the total system created by both of you. he reminded us this is why he thought it important to recognize the way in which 2 whirlpools behave when they collide, since this is the expression of physics between 2 bodies, violent or non-violent. furthermore, he said it is important in that this demonstrates the immutable truth of the physics (because the physics that hold for 2 colliding galaxies are the same physics that hold for the biomechanics of 2 combatants...the physics of the universe, by definition, are universal).

after working on the applications for awhile, we then learned a little more of the long form. i ended up making a video of what we've done to date:
chen long form, 1st 20 moves: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOBTttGOwSw


i asked Sifu how far into the long form this marks. he said it was a little more than a 1/4. i laughed. it is a very long form...i wonder what people are going to say when i do it at school.

pao quan

at this point, everybody took a break. i had brought food (i'd felt nostalgic for Chinese baked goods, so i'd found a bakery in Rosemead that was open at 7:30am), and people took time to snack.

Phunsak offered to show me more of pao quan, and i got a little bit further. i asked him to stop once i started feeling a little saturated.

kuen wu jian

we finished the day learning more of the kuen wu jian form. Alex made a video of Phunsak doing this at some point during the jian shu course in Long Beach last year. you can see it here:
kuen wu jian yi lu form: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oUSjvFqcZU


we ended the day after this. i'm going to miss the next Saturday class, since i'll be running in the Rose Bowl Half Marathon (actually, i'll be running further...the race is only 13.1 miles, and i need to do 15 at this point in the training cycle, so i'll have to tack on some miles to get my training in). i'll have to try and do a make-up session later in the week.