concepts:- positioning
- 3rd palm change
- 4th palm change
- 5th palm change
we soon had a number of new faces arrive: Scott, who's a returning baji student who apparently has been gone for a number of months (i haven't seen him before, so he must have been gone since before i started), and Viet, who's a student at UCLA and hitched a ride with Laura. we ended up swapping stories about the class, including the colorful ones from Siwann-da and Ching-Tszieh, who just came back after a freak accident involving a gate that had required 11 stitches on her ankle (she's limping, but apparently game enough to make it to class).
Art eventually arrived with the other Laura, and said we should go ahead and start with stances, since it was getting close to 11am and it was time for class to begin. Art took it upon himself to lead us this time, and began just as the rest of the jian shu class arrived with Sifu.
Sifu whispered to Lee to take Viet and start him with basic hand drills (just like Phunsak had worked with me when i had started). he then asked Laura to lead everyone through drills. Art suggested she do it counting in Chinese, and then laughed when everyone stopped to think about it. everybody was puzzled over this, so we ended up actually took a few moments to figure out the Chinese numbers from 1-to-8...i found a few useful references on this:
- http://www.du.edu/~jcalvert/math/chinum.htm
- http://www.mandarintools.com/numbers.html
- http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Chinese_numerals.html
after getting the baji students started with drills, Sifu came back and had us start with circle walking with the 3rd palm change as a review. he took a few moments to observe everyone, and then walked around correcting our technique. after several minutes, he told us to keep practicing, and then went back to the baji class to set them up with their lesson plan for the day.
i notice that there are now enough new baji students that they are having to do the same thing the bagua students are doing, with senior students taking time to introduce the new students to the fundamentals and help them review new material. for us, i know that the senior students doing most of the fundamentals and review are Phunsak, Kieun, and to a lesser degree Art and Mike. for baji, it appears that these are (for now, since their attendance is sometimes more sporadic) James, Andrew, and to some degree Jonathan (who is a younger student, but began with Sifu when he was 6 or 7, making him automatically one of the longest-tenured students Sifu has had...and i'm guessing probably more senior in terms of knowledge learned).
i should note that there are 2 Lauras and 3 Jonathans (4, if you count John Eagles, but i think he shortened his name for class just to help eliminate confusion), and so references to any of them in these blogs should be distinguished by context.
4th palm change
Sifu eventually returned and then ordered us to start circle walking with the 4th palm change (which i will forever remember by Sifu's term: "Bob's Big Boy"). but i think he was a little disturbed by what he was seeing, because he stopped us after about a minute and said that it would probably be better just to have each of us perform the 4th palm change individually in front of the class.
i think he chose today to be a "polishing" class to correct everyone's form and get people more conscious of the correct mechanics of the palm changes. and even though we'd done the 4th palm change last week, it had only been as an introductory exercise and so was still in need of extensive refinement.
we took turns circle walking and performing the 4th palm change. Sifu corrected my technique, with a couple of points that had apparently eluded me and John Eagles when we had tried to sort it out ourselves during a practice session a few weeks ago. in particular:
- the initial change from lean against the horse and ask for directions into effortlessly support the silver water jar does not involve the lower off hand going down to the dantian (as John and i had thought), but instead going down to protect the rib cage facing the opponent
- the 2nd change from effortlessly support the silver water jar into cloud crosses mountain road is supposed to occur with the upper hand remaining upright and turning into a upper block and the lower hand following a path close to the torso pushing out as the practitioner steps with the lower body into a dragon stance. Sifu noted that my lower hand was starting too far out away from my torso and following too circular a pattern.
- the shift into grab the yellow bird by the throat is not supposed to incorporate an exaggerated vertical motion, but rather a stable, solid step with the legs into the 70-30 stance--Sifu commented that i had too much "up and down" motion on this and needed to think more linearly
for grab the yellow bird by the throat, Sifu gathered us around to get a better feel for the technique. he told us to observe that it's supposed to be done in a sequence of 2 repetitions, with the grabbing hand sliding closely over the other hand to the point that the arms are literally sliding in physical contact over each other.
he demonstrated the combat application, and showed that the reason for such close motions of the arms is to allow a practitioner to continue reaching over an opponent's strike for their throat while simultaneously throttling a counter-strike from their off-arm. sliding the arms over each other denies the opponent an opening to attack and also disguises the practitioner's intended target. in addition, the grabbing motion can be for more than just the throat, but can also be for pressure points on the arm or the shoulder or clavicle areas.
Sifu made a final point about the 4th palm change in relation to its final turn into leaf covers summer flower. for this technique, he said it was helpful to imagine that we are turning into the opponent, with the turn rotating about the shoulder facing the enemy. Jason said that we need to imagine this shoulder as being stationary, so that it is the axis about which we turn our entire body weight, bringing it into the opponent. this is meant to generate extra force to help throw the opponent backwards.
5th palm change
Sifu asked everyone to try doing the 5th palm change on our own while he went back to the baji students to check on their progress.
i had tried doing this over the course of last week, but had found some peculiar problems. much of it had involved transposing the palm change from the line to a circle, especially in that while i could do it on a line in a way that finishes the palm change in a position opposite to the one i started (i.e., left-hand as opposed to right-hand), i had not been able produce the same result in a circle, but instead had found myself facing the same way i had started (e.g., if i had started facing into the circle, i still finished facing into the circle).
i ended up having Kieun help me, since he seemed to be much more familiar with this than i was. it turns out that in doing the 5th palm change on a circle, there is an additional turn in unicorn turns its body (hence the name "turns its body"...looking back on it now, my thought is duh) and also in purple swallow glides with scissor-like tails. going from white snake spits out its tongue into unicorn turns its body, the practitioner is supposed to change direction so that the unicorn faces outside of the circle, and then turn around into the circle while shifting into purple swallow glides with scissor-like tails. from there, the practitioner is supposed to turn once more so that the change into purple swallow skims the water is done along the circle once again. the positioning, in essence, has the practitioner turning in a circle to re-align themselves to resume walking the circle in the opposite direction from which they started the palm change.
by the time i had sorted this out, Sifu had returned. he pointed out to me that my transition from the starting position of lion opens its mouth to move the mountain and reverse the sea was also wrong. he said it is easier to imagine that the hands are holding onto a ball, which the practitioner can envision turning in their hands and bringing into their body as they move from lion opens its mouth to move the mountain and reverse the sea.
Jason decided that we needed to do the same thing with the 5th palm change that we had done with the 4th, and have each one of us perform the palm change in front of the class. it turned out this was very true, since i think everyone struggled with this--apparently, i was not the only one who hadn't understood the need to turn with unicorn turns its body.
here too, Sifu noted that i needed to turn more, to the point that purple swallow glides with scissor-like tails doesn't just faces into the center of the circle, but actually faces farther along closer to the perimeter near the direction of the palm change.
i had to do this in the circle a little slower than i would have liked--or slower than it should be done in practical application. but i figured it was more important to get the technique down right. of course, this means more practice later on to get this back up to an appropriate speed and instinctive level. but then, that's pretty much the rule for everything.
Sifu wrapped things up with a comment about the proper technique for kissing the toad (alternatively labeled in the bagua documents as fairy liu-hai teases the toad). he noted that apart from being a rise up into a simultaneous block and strike into the opponent's face, neck, or body, that it can also lead into a grab and pull of an opponent's outstretched arm. done in a sequential repetitive manner like grab the yellow bird by the throat, it can serve as a mechanism to continue grabbing or striking an opponent over or around an opponent's attempted strike or counter-strikes with their leading or off arms.
with that, we gathered and finished class for the day. we then went to lunch with Sifu to get to know Viet and Scott a little better.
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