day 295: dragon, tiger, & recalibration, oh my!

concepts:

• vertical v. horizontal
• front wheel drive/rear wheel drive
• yin-yang
• ting/hwa/na/fa jing
  
• recalibration

lessons:

• hsing-yi 12 animals
• kyudo
  

today was largely straightforward with just a direct progression on the curriculum. one thing to note is that there is a tournament in San Diego on Saturday, January 22, meaning that there will be no class (and so no post). there will, however, be the usual Sunday morning class. i should also probably note that this was technically the first kyudo lesson of the year, since last week was a cleaning day and before that classes had been canceled for ceremonies around the LA area.

hsing-yi 12 animals

since this was just the second Saturday back, we did a repeat of the class format from last Saturday, going through a review of the 5 lines and the lian huan form. things were a little bit smoother today for both, as i started to remember things better. having said that, i think there's still quite a bit of fine-tuning that i need to do for things to look right.

the review took up half the class, and we consumed the remainder with the 12 animals. Sifu held a pop quiz for everyone, asking each of us to do the dragon individually in front of class and then giving us pointers. for me, he noted that i need to focus more on sending pressure downward as i land, since the techniques in dragon involve vertical vectors going into the ground. currently, my movements don't manifest any effort downward. Sifu said that if done right, dragon appears to have an explosive acceleration down into the ground even more than it displays an explosive jump up.

as a pointer, Sifu said that the way to get the downward explosion is to engage the front wheel-rear wheel drive with my hands. in dragon, as you jump up the rear hand comes up and forward and the forward hand comes down and back. Sifu said that the rear hand essentially is the rear-wheel drive and the front is the front-wheel drive, where the switch in hand positions means a redirection of force through the arms, so that the switch of the rear hand to the front also means using it to direct force forward and down. the sending of the force forward and down needs to coincide with the downward portion of the jump.

you can see the video of the dragon here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5hyV4-5pn0


after dragon, Sifu taught us tiger. he said that tiger differs from dragon, in that while dragon primarily involves movement in a vertical direction, tiger involves movement in a horizontal direction. the technique in tiger is more of a pushing action, but in a way that is more explosive and has vector components forward and downward.

Sifu noted that for the technique to work, you don't push with open hands for much of the movements. instead, you keep your hands closed, and wait to open the hands until you project force. the technique involves moving forward holding the forearms out with the hands closed and facing palm-up. when the practitioner has reached an appropriate position relative to the opponent and decides to release power, the practitioner then turns the forearms so the closed hands face palms-down. at this point, the practitioner not only finishes by moving the body forward and down, but also extending the forearms and opening the hands. Sifu said that the opening of the hands is the final impetus allowing extension of the arms and body, and adds a last bit of force to the technique.

Sifu stressed that we are not supposed to lock our elbows at any point in tiger, but instead keep them slightly bent and loose. he also cautioned that we have to apply the technique with the entire body as a single structure (i.e., the legs, hips, spine, torso, shoulder, upper arms, elbows, forearms, and hands all holding as a single unit), so that when we move we do so as a single unit. he said this was necessary to allow the reaction force from the ground to transmit efficiently (i.e., without any loss) through the body and into the forearms and hands. without the body in a single unit, energy is lost at the disjuncture points (i.e., energy is lost at flexing joints, poorly aligned structure, tense muscles, etc.).

the main pushing action in tiger is through the legs, so as to generate the reaction force from the ground. this is the main source of power in the technique, and is the force that we are trying to direct using our body. any power from the upper body is less than whatever power we generate using our legs to push against the ground. as a result, any pushing motion in the upper body should only come at the end of the technique after the reaction force has already been sent into the opponent (i.e., after the main force vector has already been delivered), which is why the forearms turn and the hands open only at the very end, since this helps you to focus on holding your overall structure to keep your body as a single unit.

done properly, the feeling the opponent receives from tiger should be like a mass entering through the gate (not around or under or over, but through) to destabilize the opponent's structure, and which then drives through the opponent's centerline so that the opponent moves backwards and down. the key is to destabilize the structure, after which point the opponent is unable to use their power to counter your force vector.

the destabilization occurs by using the force vector of tiger so that it acts as a yang element filling in the yin component of the opponent's structure, which requires that you move into a position relative to the opponent so that this can occur. Sifu said this is where we have to remember the ting-hwa-na-fa progression, and that tiger (nor any of the other 12 animals) is not always about fa, but is also about ting, hwa, and na, with the forearms in tiger serving as our sensing elements leading our bodies through the progression of jings.

after showing us tiger and leading us through the movements, Sifu had us work on tiger on our own, telling us to just concentrate on the general feeling of the technique. he said we'd work on polishing tiger in the next class.

you can see the video of tiger here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWrhA_ZdqMo


we finished with that. i skipped the post-class lunch to run errands.

kyudo

kyudo went surprisingly well tonight, considering i'd essentially missed almost 6 weeks of classes. admittedly, Sensei made the class a little easier for everyone, since it was the 1st class back from the winter holidays and we also had a fair number of visitors observing. after the 1 round of formal shooting, he let us go into open shooting so he could spend time giving basic lessons and meeting with the visitors.

for me, Sensei said i'd made progress, and that i was now able to release much better than i had last year. now, however, he said i had to work on the last part of zanshin, with a final expansion of the body out before i released the string. currently, i'm at the full range of my shoulders and arms at release, but Sensei says that i can get additional range by having an expansion through the back, spine, and neck, which would allow my shoulders and arms to extend further out.

of course, once i tried to do this, i promptly had a return of struggles releasing the arrow. Sensei said that this is typical--your body gets used to drawing and releasing a certain way, and so any change in one area promptly disturbs everything else in the body. this requires a constant recalibration of all the shooting actions as the practitioner works to improve specific aspects of the form.

with this in mind, i can see that i'm still a work in progress.