days 96 & 97: Yang long form & more guest speaker!

concepts:

• cloud hands

forms:

• Yang long form

this week was largely straightforward, and so there's not too much new detail added to the Yang tai chi material i've had over the past 2 quarters.

day 96

we worked on some additional stances today for the class (rooster & low stance). both of these, i could see, gave many people problems. i suspect a lot of it was due to balance (for single-leg stance, sometimes known as rooster stance) and flexibility (for the low stance, sometimes known as snake stance) issues. but these are things that practice should resolve, so they aren't really major.

Sifu asked Art and me to take time to make corrections of other students as we went through the stances, so we obliged him and tried our best to watch out for any errors people were making.

after this, the remainder of the class was spent going farther into the form, as well as refining the steps to date. as with the Chen tai chi class, i can see that we're getting far enough along into the form that people are starting to have trouble to remember...i am as well, but i think this is an indication that there's enough information being input that it's easy to forget or lose track of it without daily review. Sifu reminded everyone that the Yang long form video was on Youtube, and that we should feel free to use it to help us practice.

day 97

Sifu brought Master Chow to the Yang class today, which was a special treat for everyone. he introduced Master Chow to the class, and then promised to do a question-and-answer session at the end of class.

to cover the day's lesson plan, we learned the final 2 stances today (cat and dragon). Art and i took more time today to help correct people as we went through them.

after this, we continued farther into the long form, going over cloud hands. Sifu demonstrated the combat application, and then stressed the following:

• there is a clear timing issue involved, in that it is imperative to make sure that low hand is near the elbow of the upraised hand, as both hands moved in circles
• in cloud hands, the left hand moves counter-clockwise (relative to the practitioner's orientation) and the right hand moves clockwise
• during cloud hands, the practitioner moves sideways, with the movement of the legs generating momentum that goes in the direction of the opponent (whether to the practitioner's left or right)
  

we repeated cloud hands a few times, alone and then integrated with the rest of the long form that we've achieved to date.

at this point, Sifu stopped class and had everyone gather around with Master Chow. Master Chow demonstrated the first part of the Yang long form (about 1/4 of the total form), and then made a few comments about our practice of Yang. he pointed out that he agreed with Master Tsou that it was crucial to grind the rear heel in the bow-and-arrow stance, and to have the horse stance with toes pointing forward and knees squeezing slightly inwards, and then demonstrated how this made a difference in stabilizing the knees. from here, he took questions from the students.

as time came to finish class, Sifu reminded everyone about midterms, which are coming within 1-2 weeks, and that we'd finalize details about the format and grading next week.