day 84: seminar (forms of energy) & bagua leg form

concepts:

• jing (tin, hwa, na, fa)
• kicks (suai, ban, go, ti, tai)
  

forms:

• xiao kai men
• energy
• leg form
  

note: this post involves a fair amount of Chinese terms. if somebody can give me the correct English spelling (or better yet, the original Chinese characters), i'd be grateful.

today was a bit of a split day. the usual Saturday morning class was held with the kung fu club at Cal State Long Beach, where Sifu was invited to hold a 2-hour seminar on bagua to the students, whose backgrounds were almost completely in long fist. the evening was a personal session in the bagua leg form, which i had started earlier this past semester but had suspended until i'd gotten past my dissertation defense.

xiao kai men

the seminar went pretty smoothly. Sifu began by having everyone learn xiao kai men in a line. he then divided the seminar into 2 groups, with Phunsak teaching the Cal State Long Beach students (since they were new to bagua), and Sifu taking the baji and bagua students from the normal Saturday class.

something i should note here is that i learned "xiao kai men" has the English translation "little gate." i was not aware of this. Sifu commented that this actually had a double meaning:

• it referred to the kidney area, which are considered small gates to the body, and was meant to draw attention to 1) the form's primacy on development and use of the torso to apply the techniques in the form, and 2) the imperative in bagua of close movements exploiting narrow openings in the enemy's defenses
• the form was traditionally used to filter out students, and hence acted as a gate, with only those who passed their test in xiao kai men (i.e., those who successfully learned the form and its applications) being allowed to continue on to learn the rest of bagua. those who did not were not allowed to continue. i suspect this was meant as a way of finding 1) students who were serious (i.e., actually diligent in study) versus those who weren't, 2) students who had a physical match to the style (i.e., whose body types fit the style) versus those whose bodies probably were better suited to other styles, and 3) students who had a grasp of the philosophy and mindset of the style.
  

John Eagles and i had met on Friday for about 1-2 hours to try and sort out the applications for xiao kai men by incorporating the concepts we've covering the past few weeks. we'd both been frustrated by xiao kai men (i wrote a post on this, reference: day 59), and figured preparing for the seminar was a good excuse to resolve some of our issues.

this was probably one of the best things we ever did. turns out all (and i mean all) our frustrations with xiao kai men before were based on incorrect (rather, more too restrictive) usage of the techniques. before, we'd thought that techniques had to be done in very specific ways. but the past few weeks have focused on recognizing the need to modify techniques to match circumstances. one of the big themes, in particular, has been that the greater importance in terms of practice is to preserve the principles of the physics--and this inherently means that the techniques have to be modified, since the physics of a particular set of circumstances requires that you adapt yourself to circumstances to maintain the physics (that is, you modify what you are doing...such as techniques).

with this in mind, John and i managed to figure out is involved in getting each of the techniques to work. we found that the theory of yin-yang and centers (remember: a center of mass for each fighter, and then a systemic center of mass for the entire system of all fighters taken together) helped in understanding just how the techniques had to be modified to match circumstances, including variables like the opponent's body type, posture, structure, and action state.

i mentioned to John that this was yet another illustration that for anyone trying to learn how to use a martial art in combat it is imperative to work with partners. that, and that it confirms the comment i've heard from others to never get married to the form...forms don't exist in a vacuum; they morph and change in response to the world around them. by remaining fixed, they risk extinction, since a changing world constantly calls for adaptation.

energy

for those of us at the seminar with Sifu, the day ended up not being entirely about xiao kai men. in fact, it ended up being only incidentally about it.

Sifu began by telling us about the nature of energy (or jing) in fighting, which he says could be seen in terms of 4 categories:

• tin jing--"listening" or "sensing" energy, which is largely about feeling out the psychological aspect of the opponent
• hwa jing--variously translated as "absorbing", "deflecting", or "redirecting" energy, and involves non-hostile contact avoiding direct force-on-force encounters
• na jing--this deals with positioning of the body (yours) so as to place or set up your application of a technique
• fa jing--this is "projection" by you of energy in terms of explosive power
  

in a fight, a person utilizes all of these forms of energy. hence, it is important to develop all these categories in order to fight with skill.

Sifu gave us a series of drills to work on each of these categories. they were actually all the same, but just had escalating levels of engagement. for today, just for training purposes, Sifu said to go all the way short of fa jing, and to work instead on developing our sensitivity to jing. the drill(s) fell as follows:

• drill 1: 2 partners take turns being the "aggressor" launching strikes and a "defender" seeking to avoid the strikes. the defender does not strike back, but does use motions of the hands and feet to attract the opponent's attention. Sifu said that fighting involves disrupting the opponent's energy, and that in bagua this is done in part by disrupting the opponent's psychological state. this is done by making the opponent miss using footwork, or "playing" with the opponent using physical actions that don't actually hit and hence confuse them. this correlates to working tin jing.
• drill 2: this begins like drill 1 (2 partners, 1 aggressor and 1 defender), except this time the defender actually does make physical contact. the purpose of the contact is to receive the opponent's strike and then deflect it harmless away. Sifu told us to make the aggressor miss a few times, and then to receive/deflect. this works hwa jing.
• drill 3: this escalates drills 1 & 2, with the defender going beyond deflection of the opponent's strike to then entering the aggressor's gate and setting up a position to launch a counter-attack. this builds on the prior drill, since it requires exercise of tin jing and hwa jing to properly set up a na jing that is effective for the situation. this works na jing.
• drill 4: presumably, this drill would escalate into full-contact sparring work to allow explosive strikes, of fa jing. but we didn't go to this level today, and Sifu said to wait on this until we had worked on the other categories of energy.
  

we worked on these drills for the course of the seminar, switching off partners to get a feel for different people and the differences in their jing.

leg form

after the post-seminar lunch, we returned to Casuda Canyon Park, since some of us had personal sessions scheduled with Sifu--Phunsak was working with Sifu on piqua, and i was working on the bagua leg form. John Eagles ended up staying for the leg form as well, since he had forgotten it.

we ended up not getting started until sunset, since Sifu got caught in a bit of a problem with his car (he'd gotten rear-ended near the end of the quarter on his way to the UCLA class) and the rental car. by the time he arrived, he said we'd have to divide the session, with an introductory part this evening and the rest of the session after tomorrow's Sunday class.

Sifu had me demonstrate the bagua leg basics, presumably to check and see that i'd been practicing since our last private session. once he was satisfied, he showed the first set of moves. i commented that the opening seemed eerily reminiscent of xiao kai men, and he responded by saying that it was xiao kai men, but simply modified to lead into movements that incorporate more leg actions and kicks.

in introducing the bagua leg form, Sifu said that the form involves 5 categories of leg movements, which appear to be not just unique to bagua, but apply to kung fu in general:

• suai--throws. we've discussed this before, but this category also covers leg actions that are involved in throwing opponents.
• ban--trips, which are leg movements that trip the enemy
• go--hooks, which involve leg movements to hook or trap the opponent's legs
• ti--kicks, which are the usual perceived assortment of low, medium, & high kicks
• tai--steps, which relate to positioning of the legs, but also involve stomps to the opponent's lower legs and feet
  

i also noted that some of the kicks looked very much like long fist, and he said that other people have noted it too. some have even compared it to lohan. both long fist and lohan are older kung fu styles. this is why many speculate that the bagua leg form has connections from prior martial arts forms, and is derived from earlier forms of kung fu.

i told Sifu that this is something that suggests an interesting topic for research--that tracing the evolution of kung fu from one form to another over time and over its spread through China could be used as a way to trace the spread of changes in Chinese culture. Sifu said that many people have talked about this, since it promises to yield a lot about Chinese history (not just kung fu, but about society in general) but that unfortunately the Chinese government seems unwilling to fund this kind of research, and that instead its focus seems to be distracted with the promotion of modern wu shu. given how so much knowledge of kung fu and kung fu history is eroding with the death of masters in the modern era, this makes it seem that history is being sacrificed for a future that has no connection to the past.

it's a pity.

Sifu demonstrated a few combat applications, and then stopped for the night. before we left, he noted that the history of the leg form was a bit of an open question. Phunsak had commented on this some time before. apparently, it is known that the leg form, much like the arm form and elbow form, was developed by someone other than Dong Hai Chuan (the founder of bagua). the forms are meant to be "enhancements" to bagua, and also sometimes meant to be used as remedies to improve a practitioner's skill (e.g., for someone with poor leg skills, the leg form would be prescribed to help them improve their leg work). Sifu said no one knows who developed the various forms, although people have suspicions...suspicions that unfortunately do not have definitive evidence to support them.

ah, the mysteries of history.