day 135: refinement, 2-person forms

concepts:

• husband & wife (yang & yin)
• fa (yen, so, sheng, bu)
• spacing (long and short)
• jing (ting, hwa, na, fa)
  

forms:

• 2-person, bagua 64 palms (palm change 5)
  

today started off slow for a Saturday...cold and cloudy (too bad it won't stay that way...), and just perfect for a hot cup of coffee before class.

i arrived super early today, to work through some trickier aspects of the bagua leg form, as well as to review the yang tai chi and chen tai chi long forms. these went a little quicker than i thought, and i had enough time to try and work on the kuen wu jian form--although the key word is "try," since i'm still finding the substance of this form rather elusive. i know this is something i'm going to have to work on, since it continues to be bit of a head-scratcher.

class began with Sifu asking for a final confirmation of people going to the Las Vegas tournament. from what i could tell, there appear to be about 6 people going, although this number is uncertain seeing that a number of baji students had not arrived when we took the tally. despite this, Sifu took his estimate and instructed the bagua students to continue working on the 2-person form for palm change 5.

2-person, bagua 64 palms (palm change 5)

Phunsak paired off with Ching-Chieh, so they could work on their 2-person form for the tournament. however, i noted that about half the bagua students present hadn't learned the current 2-person form for palm change 5 either (Laura, Art, Feng), and told Phunsak we needed to start from the beginning of the form, meaning that it shouldn't be a review but actually a beginning lesson.

with that said, we took the rest of class to work on this. we began with a brief run-through of palm change 5, with side A individually and then side B individually. from there, we continued with the customary integration of both sides using partners to form the 2-person combination.

palm change 5 is the longest of the 8 palm changes, meaning that both side A and side B involve a greater number of movements relative to the other palm changes. part of this is that palm 5 involves 2 spins, calling upon both partners to cover a lot of ground and deal with changes in orientation, which can be disruptive to the sense of direction. it also means that there is a lot of attention that needs to be paid to location to maintain spacing. it takes a lot of practice--continuous time (believe me, i remember the hours spent on this last fall). as a result, it poses a challenge to anyone learning it for the 1st time.

Sifu observed us for a little time, and then interrupted to make some corrections:

• the opening movement for side A (from lion opens its mouth to move the mountain and reverse the sea) is a small movement, with the off-hand serving to aid the forward hand redirect an opponent's reach.
• for each of the 2 spins in side B, which involve black bear turns its body, you need 1) the hands to go over the head to protect it, and then are supposed to brush off the shoulders, and 2) to end out of the spins in a rooster stance.
• for side A, the finishing movement of hide summer flowers beneath the leaves, is supposed to be going into the opponent with the upper hand distracting the opponent's face and the shoulder of the lower hand leading the body into the opponent's torso (unlike other applications of the technique, which involve the technique going the other direction to form an arm or joint lock)
  

after watching us make corrections, Sifu then stopped us to discuss some relevant concepts related to them:

• husband & wife (yang & yin)--Sifu had alluded to this before, using the same terms last week. basically, it's just an alternative way to talk about yang & yin, but as a mnemonic device to assist insight and memory regarding proper form, by using an analogy that highlights the idea that frequently the yin action is more important than the yang action in making a particular technique effective. essentially, the visual imagery that's employed is to consider than frequently the perception about a married couple is that the husband is the "acting" party (i.e., the more visibly active component) and the wife the lower profile party, but that the reality is that the wife really "controls" the couple and the husband simply the facilitator (i.e. the "agent" for the wife's decisions). taking this as an analogy, this means that in a single technique, the yang actions (taken as the male, or "husband") may appear to be the crucial element, but the reality is that it's just assisting the yin actions (taken as the female, or "wife"). Sifu said the off-hand action in the opening movement for side A, as well as the finishing movement for side A, are examples where the yin action is crucial for the technique to work.
• fa (yen, so, sheng, bu)--this is not the same fa as in fa jing. but the character that relates to coordination. Sifu noted that in order to truly express the physics required to make the techniques in bagua work, you have to exercise the correct form, and this in turn means you have to exercise the requisite level of coordination to move your body to follow the correct form. in kung fu and TCM, Sifu said this is referred to as the 4 coordinating elements of yen fa (eyes), so fa (hands), sheng fa (torso), and bu fa (feet). these 4 have to be synchronized together to align the direction, location, timing, and force to properly deploy the physics necessary to make bagua techniques work.
• spacing--spacing is crucial. Sifu said that in TCMA, there's the idea of "long" reach or "long" distance, referring to the idea that you are allowing too much spacing between yourself and the opponent, with "too much" being anything that requires you to fully extend to make physical contact. this is problematic, since it means you've 1) lost all potential energy you may have had by contracting your muscles, and 2) lost all kinetic energy. this is why it's better to be "short", in terms of being close to the opponent, since you 1) have potential energy that can 2) be released as kinetic energy, such that the apex of kinetic energy occurs at the moment you make physical contact with the opponent.
• jing (ting, hwa, na, fa)--following his comments on spacing, Sifu returned to the ideas of ting jing (sensing), hwa jing (controlling), na jing (positioning), and fa jing (projection). he said we need to focus less on fa jing, since fa jing is impossible unless you have been successful in following the sequence of ting jing, hwa jing, and na jing. but ting, hwa, and na all involve observing spacing, and adjusting your spacing from long to short distance, until you get to the appropriate short distance to employ a desired fa jing.
  

Sifu finished by noting that these ideas are not unique to bagua, and for illustration highlighted their expression in tai chi, choosing ward off, parting wild horse's mane, and slanted flying as demonstration.

he noted that all 3 of these involve a forward high yang hand and a rear lower yin hand--according to him, this is a clear demonstration of the "wife" (yin) hand being crucial to the technique, since all 3 techniques are much more powerful if the yi (intent) is placed on actions of the "wife" hand. in terms of physics, Sifu noted that this can be seen as the yang hand really doing nothing more than establishing a control point in the form of a fulcrum, and the yin hand then acting as the levering agent rotating the opponent about the fulcrum.

to do this properly, however, requires proper physical coordination so as to get into a position to actually express these physics...and this in turn requires proper spacing, which in turn requires proper execution of ting jing, hwa jing, and na jing, such that the fa jing just simply becomes the concluding afterthought of your yi into the wife hand.

Sifu finished the day with that, and we wrapped class up to go to our customary post-class lunch.