day 226: exploring the form

concepts:

• transitions

lessons:

• bagua fist form

the form is not the form. the way is not the way. or something like that. i've been juggling school/work (for me the same thing), recovering from the flu (no longer contagious!), and coming back on the conditioning trail. i had to miss kyudo again this week to deal with the start of some on-line classes i'm teaching--this is getting on a little longer than i'd like, but i've become of the opinion certain confluences of events are usually indicative of certain destinies in outcomes, that this may be a reflection of what was meant to be at this point in time...but i expect things to return here eventually, as they always do (just like in surfing...the waves come in sets, and if miss the break between sets, it's better to wait for the next one before paddling out into the ocean, or otherwise you'll find yourself fighting a long procession of smack-downs with nothing to show for it except a lot of water).

bagua fist form

Sifu told us today that he wanted us to begin thinking more deeply about the bagua fist form. he's shown us the applications up to now, but this time he says he wanted us to see all the variations in applications--except that he not only wants us to not only develop understanding of the applications, but also to develop the ability to see the variations of applications for ourselves. he noted that it's important to be able to figure things out on your own, and that this is a skill that requires practice.

to accomplish this objective, Sifu ran class as a pop quiz. he told us to try and figure out the differing applications in the form on our own, and he'd return to check and see what we'd found. he asked us to emphasize applications coming out of the transitions between techniques, so that we could see that the transitions are more than just transitions, but actually fighting tools in themselves. for now, he told us to just concentrate on the first 18-20 movements of the form.

we spent the bulk of the remaining class time working on this, trying to interpret the movements in the form into different applications. Sifu came back a few times to check on our progress, correcting things that he thought were misinterpretations or identifying applications that wouldn't work. i won't go through them all here, since there were too many and everything was largely speculative.

this session was useful, in terms of learning how to see the potential applications of movements and understanding what they showed regarding the underlying nature of the fist form. beyond this, it was also good in that it showed that the form is not just a form, but a library of hints regarding differing interpretations in the movements of the form.