day 132: drilling the 2-person form & tui na seminar

concepts:

• distance
• hands
  

forms:

• 2-person 64 palms, palms 1-4
  

this Saturday was abbreviated, since this weekend was scheduled for the tui na seminar, which was scheduled to run from 1-5pm on saturday and 9am-5pm on Sunday. in addition, we also had a slightly lower than normal turnout, since Kieun was absent with his parents visiting and Phunsak had to skip the morning to deal with some job issues.

Sifu reminded us about the schedule for the weekend, and also noted that we would have back-to-back Saturday & Sunday classes for the next 2 weekends. he also announced that he'd decided to withdraw from the Baltimore tournament, since there just wasn't time to prepare (it's in July, and Sifu is going to be gone for 3 weeks in June), and that we were going to devote the summer to preparing for the Las Vegas tournament (it's at the end of August).

with the announcements taken care of, Sifu instructed the bagua students to work on reviewing the 2-person forms, particularly with palm change 4. he pointed out that this was necessary for Ching-Chieh, who's still scheduled to compete in the 2-person forms competition with Phunsak, but is still learning the forms (i should note she was absent for the last 6 months of last year, which was pretty much the time period we learned all of 64 palms side B and all the 2-person forms).

we went through the 2-person forms for palms 1-3, with iterations of each palm and each side individually, and then iterations of the 2 sides combined for each palm. we then proceeded onto palm change 4.

to her credit, Ching-Chieh is picking things up quickly. but it probably doesn't help that we've learned different variations of each 2-person form, with the variations dependent on what techniques we are trying to demonstrate. while it's not a big deal for 2 partners who know the alternative variations, since they can always agree as to which permutation to perform, it is a big deal for anyone trying to learn them for the 1st time, since it's then difficult to understand what is the "right" action or "wrong" action, or which action is even connected with which particular version...particularly if you keep having to change partners to learn from and practice with.

Sifu eventually returned to watch us do the 2-person form for palm change 4. he noted that we were not quite on target with respect to the distance between partners for the 4th palm change, and pointed out that even though there are kicks involved in the palm change, we still need to stay close to each other.

he then asked to see our 2-person form for palm change 3. he pointed out that we were all consistently missing one key hand strike in the middle, where side A is engaging hawk pierces through the sky and side B is engaging white snake coils in its den. at this point, both partners have a lower hand driving into each other's side, either at the hip or the kidney. in the 2-person form, Sifu said the partners should have their hands actually meet, and serve as a repulsing mechanism allowing both to then spin into big serpent coils its body.

by the time we'd worked on correcting the 2-person forms for palm changes 3 & 4, it was approaching noon. in order to have time for a quick lunch and make it in time to set up for the seminar, Sifu called class to a close and instructed anyone who was going where to meet.

i should note that similar to the last seminar weekend, i am not writing a separate post for this weekend's tui na seminar (because, again, there has to be an incentive to go, shouldn't there?). in addition, while i did make some videos, i won't be posting them on Youtube (not because i'm being obnoxious, but because the file sizes are too large for the Youtube limits--boooooooooooo Youtube!!!). however, Art told me that there will be a manual with DVDs being made, similar to the ones made for the chin na seminar, and that they will be available within a few weeks once the videos are edited and published to DVD.