days 130 & 131: polishing the long form

concepts:

• 2-count
• 4-count
• ball & bowl
  

forms:

• yang long form

this week was primarily centered on polishing the long form, and practicing in preparation of the midterm exam. apparently, there is also a Asia-themed culture event at the Anderson School which we've been invited to make a demonstration at. although, i am not certain as to what the details are.

day 130

tuesday began with administrative details. Sifu said it was midterm time, and asked everyone when they would prefer to have the exam, this Thursday, or next Tuesday or Thursday. predictably, everybody promptly voted for next Thursday, presumably to maximize their practice time (or, i really believe, to maximize their procrastination). Sifu announced that the midterm would be the same as last quarters, with each person doing an individual performance of the 2nd half of the long form, except that this time we may be recording video for future reference.

as an additional administrative detail, we also talked about the Anderson School culture show. Linus, one of the students, is in the business school, and i guess one of the organizers of the show. from what i could gather, he is hoping for a kung fu demonstration, and Sifu has agreed to oblige. although, the question is what we're going to demonstrate and who is going to do it. it appears that at the least we're going to do a tai chi demonstration (probably yang, using whoever in class can make it), and also a bagua demonstration (if no one else can make it, i'm assuming this means me doing it solo). whatever happens, the show is next Thursday evening at the business school at 5:30pm.

we spent the remainder of class doing the 2nd half of the long form, but with Sifu having us do 2 different variations: 1st with the 2-count method we've learned the previous quarters (i.e., 1 is breathe-in, 2 is breathe-out), and 2nd with the 4 count method we've used this quarter (i.e., with the 4 jings, where 1 is ting, 2 is hwa, 3 is na, 4 fa).

day 131

Sifu began this thursday with stance work, leading everyone through the 8 tai chi stances for review.

once we finished this, he announced he wanted the rest of class to be dedicated to reviewing the 2nd half of the long form to help everyone memorize and polish the sequence of postures. this was largely methodical, with us progressing through several iterations each of the 2-count method, 4-count method, and then--returning to concepts of the fall quarter--the ball and bowl method.

we finished with a reminder about the exam and business school culture show.