day 114: catching up w chen & kuen wu (my best friends)

concepts:

• no hands
• no blocking
• dropping weight
• reversing circles
  

forms:

• pao quan
• chen tai chi long form
• kuen wu jian
  

this Sunday was a bit of backtracking. we had a good number of students who'd missed out on sections of the chen long form and the kuen wu jian form, and Sifu decided we'd spend extra time getting everyone up to speed.

pao quan

i'd shown up early with Phunsak to get a little further with long fist. i warmed up with tantui this morning, and then had Phunsak take me a little further into pao quan. i'm getting close enough to the end of this form that i can sense it finishing with about another 1-2 sessions.

as a result, i'd spent a fair amount of time this past week working on pao quan. i'd also tried to devote a bulk of the practice time to the yang and chen tai chi long forms, since i'd noticed i'd started to have problems remembering the differences between the 2 (it's like learning Spanish and Italian at the same time...different enough to distinguish, but similar enough to get confused). in addition, after my fiasco with the last kuen wu class, i'd emphasized the kuen wu form this week to try and get prepared for this Sunday. basically, this entire week had been about everything except bagua, and had been a very personal bonding experience with my best friends: chen and kuen wu. hooray.

chen tai chi

once Sifu arrived, he had everyone perform the chen long form to date, with several iterations without Sifu, first with him calling out the names of the techniques, and then with him just observing. because of the students catching up, he had us break off into various groups to work on the various sections we were struggling through.

after awhile, he then gathered us together to demonstrate the applications for the last sequence we were doing. he noted that while it initiated as a circular throw using an arm & shoulder lock, it continued into a reversal of the circle with a throw in the opposing direction. basically, he pointed out that the second circle was an insurance exploiting the direction of the opponent's resistance to the first circle. in addition, he also pointed out that this should be a yin movement towards and around your body away from the opponent's location, taking advantage of the opponent's yang energy.

we ended up practicing this application in pairs for some time, with me experimenting against Phunsak and John Eagles. it seemed relatively straightforward, but i noticed that the positioning of the feet and elevation of the arm & shoulder lock were crucial in making this work. in addition, there is a dramatic difference in the amount of effort required between you making a clear yin movement (rotating away from the opponent and towards your body) and a yang movement.

at this point, i took the opportunity to ask Sifu to show me the applications from the session i'd missed. apparently a few other people had missed this session as well, since we ended up taking a good chunk of time discussing these. Sifu demonstrated the applications, making the following comments:

• in the chen version of snake creeps down, the technique acts to push the opponent backwards, but can work just using the foot (i.e., the leading foot strikes directly into the opponent's rear ankle, rolling it backwards), just the fists (i.e., the leading fist goes into the opponent's rear knee), or just the shoulder (i.e., the shoulder drives into the opponent's torso, with the rear leg driving your body forward as you shift forward into bow-and-arrow stance). of course, you can use some combination of these.
• in the technique, the hands are fists. the temptation is to use these to block the opponent's strike. this is not necessarily true. sometimes it is possible to block an opponent's strikes with the hands, but sometimes you miss. this technique works without having to intercept with the hands, and so should be practiced with no hands and no blocking. instead, the hands should be fists, and their action should be just to redirect an opponent's arms just far enough to allow you to slide under into the technique
• immediately following snake creeps down, the form has the practitioner rise into a raised hand and knee. Sifu said this can be interpreted as a knee strike into the opponent's leg or torso and a hand strike into the opponent's jaw or face, but it doesn't have to be. alternatively, it can be seen as setting up the opponent for a push, in that you entice the opponent to lift their attention (and hence center of gravity) upwards. this makes it possible for the foot to then come down on the opponent's knee or calf and the hand and elbow to go down into the opponent's torso, disrupting their structure and causing them to fall backwards. Sifu stressed that in order for this to work, the hand and the knee must operate in strict synchronization, so that the downward motion is really just a dropping of weight (i.e., the hand and knee aren't applying force down, they're just working as a single unit so that your entire body drops as a single mass down).
  

we spent the remainder of the time getting everyone on the same page with the form and the applications.

kuen wu jian

after the chen, Sifu called on us to spend some more time with the kuen wu jian form. again, there were a number of students who'd missed out on sections of this, so we spent time getting everyone up to speed. i didn't mind, since i'm still getting stuck at several points in the form, and there are still some nuances i don't quite understand.

we did go a little further in the form, but the majority of the time was spent practicing the form and focusing on several crucial transition points. i did take a little time on the side to work with John Eagles on some jian shu basics, since Phunsak had said the form is dramatically easier once you understand the basics that are being expressed in it.

after smoothing out some of the kinks--or at least, smoothing them out more than they have been, we called class to end for the day. Sifu couldn't make lunch again, since he his wife was still suffering from the flu and he had to get home to check on her. but the rest of us went on our own.