days 60 & 61: tai chi (like a snake)

concepts:

• yin-yang

forms:

• Yang simplified 24 movement

i actually missed the Tuesday class this week. they ran a career seminar on campus all this week with 1 session that conflicted with tai chi, and i felt compelled to go to the seminar. but i didn't miss too much, since i managed to get a heads-up from some other students about what was covered.

day 60

i was out this day, but i was told that this was a review day, with the major thing being an addition of 2 stances (low stance, and 60-40). i took some time to try and extrapolate the next movements in the form by using the list Sifu had given out in comparison to some YouTube videos. i figured this wasn't really the right way to learn it, but at least it gave me a rough idea of what had been covered.

day 61

this was (largely) a straightforward extension from previous class last week. my legs were a little sore from my Wednesday workouts, so i wasn't really 100%. but i felt good enough that i made it through today.

today was (thankfully) review. we went through the simplified 24-movement form up to the point where we did snake creeps down going into left rooster. this comes at the end of sequence starting with striking ears and 2 high kicks (left & right) and 2 iterations (left & right) of snake creeps down. he noted that with respect to coordinating the hand and feet, to remember the yin-yang concepts. this meant a number of things:

• as one limb goes up, another limb goes down
• as one limb becomes insubstantial (decreases power), another limb becomes substantial (applies power)
  

a good portion of time was also spent on tai chi stances. today, we did 6 out of the 8:

• horse
• bow-and-arrow
• 60-40
• 70-30
• low
• rooster
  

these seem similar to bagua in terms of the lower body positioning, but the hand postures are different. this is a minor adjustment, but it's interesting to me to see the variation. i'm starting to wonder how martial artists are able to remember the differences between different styles.

Sifu finished by telling us that he would show some videos of the different approaches to doing tai chi--traditional versus wu shu. he said it was important to note, since one had combat applications (traditional) and the other was meant more for performance art (wu shu). he told everyone that we are learning the traditional approach, which allows the theater/dance majors in the class to modify it for performance, but still preserves the original intent of tai chi.