days 123 & 124: interlacing yang with existing theory

concepts:

• 5-element theory
• breathing
• push hands progression
  
• sensitivity
  
• jing (ting, hwa, na, fa)
• yin & yang
  

forms:

• stances
• yang long form

this week had a bit of contrast, with Tuesday being an extended lesson into the 2nd half of the long form, and Thursday being a lecture introducing basic combat theory into Yang tai chi.

day 123

Tuesday was largely straightforward, with the lesson plan following the same pattern as the prior weeks. the major difference was that most of class was spent on continuing much farther than before into the 2nd half of the long form. Sifu said that this was largely because so much of the 2nd half involved repetition of the same moves--moves introduced in the 1st half, particularly single whip, grasping bird's tail, and cloud hands (and from what i could tell, this is true, with the section we learned today feeling like a video set to repeat...and repeat...and repeat). this meant that there was less need to introduce the techniques or finer points of the movement, giving more time to simply progressing through the form.

we took some brief time in class to do the tai chi stances and then to return to the 1st half, using 5-element theory to go through the movements, reciting not only the element, but also the external and internal organs associated with each movement. in addition, Sifu also reminded everyone about breathing, and the material we covered the last 2 quarters on using a 2-count method for each movement that indicated breathing in (on the 1 count) and breathing out (on the 2 count).

day 124

in contrast to Tuesday, this Thursday was dominated by lecture. apparently Sifu and Art have been having some extended conversations about the nature of tai chi, largely in connection to the book they are writing about Yang and Chen. Sifu said there were a number of things he wanted to cover today that he thought were important.

to begin with, he said that there are some misperceptions about Yang tai chi that he wanted to correct. first was the emphasis on still push hands (i.e., push hands that required the feet remain stationary). according to Sifu, this is only one aspect of push hands, and was never meant to be the ultimate aim of tai chi. he said that as a fighting art, tai chi requires movement, and that hence there are several stages in push hands training progressing towards full-speed full-contact fighting. stationary push hands is only one stage in this progression, and anyone who sees push hands with fixed feet as being the end point of tai chi is ignoring the martial purposes of tai chi.

second was the nature of slow movements. Sifu said that people tend to belittle tai chi as a fighting art, saying that there is no relationship between its slow movements and actual fighting. he said these attitudes ignore the training methodology used by tai chi, which utilizes slow movements for a very clear, very specific purposes: improving physical coordination and related mind-body awareness, as well as increasing familiarity with the nature of the physics employed in the movements. the central idea, according to Sifu, is improving sensitivity, with the reasoning that increasing sensitivity to the self and the movements enables development of sensitivity to the opponent--which is crucial to fighting.

third was the disconnect in many people's minds between tai chi and fighting. Sifu said that many people are unable to relate tai chi to combat, largely because they focus their energies on tai chi as a form of exercise for health and spirituality. in doing so, they lose track of the combat concepts that tai chi needs to utilize in order to be a martial art. Sifu referred to the combat concepts he's discussed before (but which he was introducing for the first time to this class):

• 4 kinds of energy involved in combat: ting (sensing), hwa (dissipating or dissolving), na (positioning), and fa (projection). of these, Sifu noted that tai chi was really emphasizing ting, hwa, and na more than fa, since the proper application of fa (i.e., application which produces the most effective results against an opponent) requires the correct sequence of ting, hwa, and na.
• yin & yang: with yang movements involving force vectors aimed forwards, up, outward, or rotating towards the opponent, and yin movements involving force vectors away, down, inward, or rotating away from the opponent. Sifu pointed out that Yang tai chi is about yin, and is similar to other northern Chinese martial arts in that it requires the use of yin actions first before application of yang. this is reflected in the nature of Yang tai chi's emphasis on ting, hwa, and na relative to fa jing--yin actions involve those that are soft enough to allow sensing, dissolving, and positioning of an opponent.
  

i've written about Sifu's discussions about these combat concepts extensively before (reference: http://jonathanonapath.blogspot.com/search/label/combat%20concepts), so i won't go into detail about them here.

we finished class with a brief run-through of the 2nd half of the form that we'd covered this week, and ended the week with that.