day 101: more refinement of 64 palms

concepts:

• yi
• visual sight
• contact
• balance
• soft & hard
  

forms:

• palm change 5

i'd meant to come to class super early today, to run through the forms for pao quan, chen tai chi, and kuen wu, particularly seeing that i've been struggling to remember certain parts of them. but as luck would have it, there was a major festival for Chinese New Year (and also Vietnamese New Year) in Monterey Park, and i'd found myself stuck in traffic at 8am in the morning. go figure.

i ended up pulling over and getting a pile of food from a favorite chinese bakery of mine over in Rosemead (yeah, i got detoured that far). my reasoning was that if this Saturday was really that big of an event, i might as well see that the rest of class didn't feel left out.

as it was, i managed to go through pao quan and kuen wu by the time people started arriving. Phunsak was late (stuck in particularly bad traffic on the 5 freeway...again, i suspect he got caught in the traffic on the way to the Vietnamese New Year, or Tet, down in Orange County). that gave me enough time to get some of what i had needed to do accomplished. John Eagles and i even managed to do a few run-throughs with the kuen wu jian form.

palm change 5

with Phunsak late, Sifu announced his plan was to work on refining palm change 5. he had the bagua students warm up with it while he got the baji students started, and then returned to watch each of us do the palm change solo.

for me, he pointed out that i was still thinking too much through the form and that i needed to exercise more yi (alternative English spelling is "i", translated as "intent"). he said this would smooth out my movements. he also made a number of other comments for everyone else, which i've summarized as follows:

• yi (or i)--this is more connected with understanding what a movement is trying to do, so it involves just not the intent of the motion in terms of its purpose, but also understanding of its physics and its target. this affects the movement, direction, and placement of force, as well as its magnitude (i.e., it affects the force vector).
• visual sight--Sifu noted this is a continuing bad habit of mine. he estimates 25% of the time my eyes tend to wander, usually to the ground. he noted that you have to understand where the opponent is supposed to be in connection with a particular technique, since this influences your yi. in addition to this, it's important in that it allows you to better follow your opponent's actions.
• contact--people seem to be continuing the habit of breaking physical contact. Sifu reminded everyone that bagua involves maintaining contact with an opponent. this is why there's such a frequent use of the term "sticking." this is important in terms of not only improving your sensitivity to an opponent's actions, but also important in terms of overloading the opponent's senses and confusing their interpretation of your action, and so thereby disguises your movements to help catch and disrupt the opponent
• balance--we have to maintain balance. Sifu stressed this involves strengthening of our stances, which can be done by better visualizing and applying the direction of our force (whether from our body weight or from the energy of our movements) through our legs down to our toes. this is why bagua often uses the term "grabbing the ground with the toes." this seems to help lower the center of gravity, thereby improving balance.
• soft & hard--Sifu noted that are movements tend to be either too soft or too hard. he noted that in bagua, similar to other martial arts, there is a balance between hard and soft, just like there's a balance between yin and yang. he said we need to be soft in following and sticking to an opponent's movements, and soft in positioning ourselves for counter-attack. but this doesn't mean being soft all the time, since we still have to apply a force vector to project energy at the moment we launch an attack. as a result, we have to recognize that we have to be able to flow seamlessly between soft and hard.
  

Phunsak eventually arrived, and just in time for Sifu's comments about the techniques in palm change 5 themselves. he observed:

• move the mountain and reverse the sea actually involves a rotational motion to redirect an opponent's strike, or to move their defenses out of the way. Sifu noted the rotation is very similar to the ball and bowl qi-gong from tai chi, and in fact is really just an application of it.
• unicorn turns its body is just a reminder to smack (i.e., slap) the opponent, and so doesn't have to be done in conjunction with any other techniques, and can be offensive just as much as it can be defensive. in the past, we've seen it as an escape from an attempted joint lock. this time, Sifu noted it can just as readily be a diversionary move to get the opponent's attention, or its spiraling action can be used to help move the opponent's arms out of the way.
• fairy liu-hai teases the toad is not necessarily a linear movement. in the past, we've seen its application as a upward strike with the elbow to the opponent's throat or jaw, or as an opening action to allow a follow-up strike to the opponent's head. this time, Sifu said that a more circular underhand motion with the rear hand allows you to go under the opponent's defenses into their neck and head regions.
• divert and grab by the collar doesn't necessarily have to be a strike to an opponent's neck or head, or even a block. Sifu showed that it can be a throw, similar to a shuai jiao move. Phunsak seemed to know this, since he nodded and said he'd seen this before. he demonstrated it to me later, with the variations that change its velocity and power.
• golden rooster spreads its wings isn't just a throw or a push into the opponent. it can also remind you that you can target the opponent's rear knee or ankle.
  

we practiced these applications for awhile while Sifu went to work with the baji students. eventually, at his request, we also did the 2-person form for palm change 5. after some time, he returned to call class for a close.

since Phunsak was staying for a private consultation and was crashing at my place, i ended up staying. John elected to stay, saying he enjoyed observing all the private consultation sessions. because of the holiday traffic, we all stuck around at the park and finished eating the bakery goods i'd brought.

while Phunsak had his session, John and i contented ourselves by reviewing the 2-person forms for palm change 5 and palm change 6. by the time we had finished Phunsak had wrapped up his time with Sifu, and so we decided to finish for the day since we had Sunday class tomorrow.