day 108: finishing refinement of side A, 64 palms

concepts:

• lightness
• feeling
• bagua energy
  

forms:

• palm changes 7 & 8

this was the day i left for Ironman New Zealand (Saturday, Feb. 23), but seeing that it was an evening flight and Phunsak was going to drive me to the airport, i went ahead and attended class.

today was meant to finish the refinement of side A, with the lesson plan including both palm changes 7 & 8. generally speaking, Sifu emphasized the following:

• lightness--the danger with bagua is that a person starts to engage more and more force in an attempt to generate power, thereby losing sight of the fact that there are alternative physics that can generate the same results. particularly with palm changes 7 & 8, which involve movements remarkably similar to tai chi, long fist, and piqua. Sifu pointed out that we need to recognize that the application of force is a discretionary thing (i.e., it's not always necessary, and sometimes not even desireable), and is subject to what it is that we want to do. for example, with palm change 7, using forceful movements with white ape presents the fruit actually stiffens the opponent's body, impeding the technique; better is to constrain the force and allow the hands to slide along the opponent's body (thereby reducing their perception of your hands as a threat and hence not stiffening) to allow you to gain a position that enables your body to then engage greater force (force, incidentally, which is greater than that possible from your hands). this idea is the same for palm change 8 and big bird spreads its wings and phoenix spreads its wings (you want to be light to not alert the attacker to your intent, so that they do not recognize why you are positioning yourself until it is too late)
• feeling--Sifu reminded us again that bagua requires the ability to sense the opponent's actions, so that our movements are not always about "sticking" to an opponent, redirecting their force, or applying force, but rather just as much about simply feeling the opponent out so as to learn what they are doing, what they are hoping to accomplish, and their general style or mode of behavior. this, Sifu noted, is part of "playing" with a person, meaning that "playing" is not just about trying to disrupt the opponent's mental state but also about getting a feel for their actions. again, this means that bagua techniques be light, to the point that sometimes you don't even really have to make physical contact...contact is fine and also useful, but it is capable of signaling your own intent as equally as it is capable of discovering the opponent's. in truth, contact is limited, and full contact (contact with force) is restricted to the moments when fa jing is projected.
• bagua energy--the transmission of power in bagua is often difficult to learn. it's not always the obvious methods typical to other forms of kung fu (like baji, long fist, wing chun, hung gar, etc.), although it can be. but it also involves recognizing and exploiting the physics of angular momentum, tangential direction, and rotating and spiralling force vectors. Sifu observed that this is crucial, since much of bagua, if done without the right physics, can become very ineffective. for an example, he pointed out that sweeping aside 10,000 men in palm change 8 requires the correct initiation of footwork and follow-through of angular rotation to generate the rotational momentum necessary to inject power into the movement, and that without this the technique becomes very dangerous for the practitioner, since it can result in you being extended and off-center, and thereby utterly vulnerable to attack.
  

we practiced the combat applications in pairs, focusing on the alternative applications of the techniques in palm changes 7 & 8.

we finished a little early because it started to rain. this was fine, since it meant that i had enough time to go to lunch with everyone and still was able to go and shower before having Phunsak drive me to the airport for my flight to New Zealand. hooray!