day 115: jing drills & ongoing refinement of side B

concepts:

• jing (tin, hwa, na, fa)
• principles & physics, versus techniques
  
• footwork
• 6 harmonies (nothing operates alone)
  
• timing
• closing
• yi (intent)
  

forms:

• tantui
• 64 palms, side B
• jing drills
• bagua leg form
  

this Saturday was a continuation of the refinement of side B. i arrived extra early today to review things, since my mother was in town and i'd had to curtail some of my usual weekday workouts. i ended up spending the morning working on the kuen wu jian form and pao quan, since both continue to be ongoing challenges as of late. i also took a little time to check on my bagua leg form, since Jay and i had scheduled a private session this afternoon to go further into the form.

as people came in today, Sifu reminded everyone about this weekend's chin na seminar (Saturday & Sunday, Cal State LA, w Saturday session commencing after the Saturday morning class and the Sunday session going all day...for extra information contact Art Schoenfeld). with that stated, he then gathered everyone together and told us to do tantui.

tantui

i have to say i had a feeling tantui was coming. Sifu had given hints about it last week, and i've noticed that he likes to periodically return to tantui. i suspect this is for several reasons: 1) we have new (and some not-so-new) students who have yet to do tantui, 2) it is considered a fundamental component of the introductory steps in the Wutan curriculum, and 3) fundamentals, unlike wisdom, tend to corrode if left untended over time.

which is just as well. one thing i've learned from sports is that the hallmark of advanced athletes is that they don't spend less time drilling fundamentals--they actually spend more. granted, you don't do it all the time, since you have to build upwards to a higher state of being, and so sooner or later have to get yourself off the ground. but they do dedicate very specific, very discrete, and very clearly defined segments of the training calendar to fundamentals, with very particular objectives in mind: restoring muscle and neuro-skeletal memory, restoring efficiency in movement, and honing the correct technique that is crucial to create the gains that are expected from the later stages of the training cycle. it is following this that fundamentals are then integrated into ongoing performance gains...which is what i'm seeing is going on with the Wutan curriculum--or at least, i can sense that somebody at some time some where had some clue about this kind of methodology.

i'm thinking we need to repeat tantui again over the next several weeks. it feels just about right to restore some of the fundamentals--particularly the ones that i seemed to have lost last week. that, and you have to admit it gets a little addictive in an obsessive-compulsive kind of way.

64 palms, side B

once we finished with tantui, Sifu instructed Phunsak to have us continue the refinement of side B.

we continued from last Saturday, doing a brief review of palm changes 1 & 2, side B, and then going onto to palm change 3. i made extra effort to try and incorporate the comments i'd gotten last week, focusing more on expanding my movements, turning at the waist, keeping my head upright in alignment with my spine, and keeping the feet flat on the ground by sinking my dantian through my center. i'd worked on this a little over the week, at least enough to make some corrective measures. but as to whether it is turning out right is something that will take time to evaluate.

after palm 3, we took a break. we ended up sorting out some applications, with John, Phunsak, Kieun, Richard, and i making a diversion into grappling and counter-grappling options (i'd been scratching my head over some of the lessons we've had on this, and was trying to figure out how they'd translate given different permutations of the usual grappling attacks to the legs).

eventually, we made a group decision to review the remainder of the palm changes in side B, particularly since it had been awhile since we'd done all of them. Phunsak led, and we did a sequential, methodical set of palm changes 4-8, side B, with multiple iterations for each one.

this was probably one of the wiser things we did, since i think everyone's memory was a little fuzzy. for me, i found myself missing some movements in palms 7 & 8, and i had to stop at a couple of points to refresh my memory...just goes to show you--if you don' t use it, you lose it. it applies to your physical skills, it applies to your mental ones. god forbid it applies to anything else.

jing drills

at this point Sifu gathered the bagua students together and demonstrated a series of drills involving some of the movements from the palm changes in side B, particularly for palms 1-3. these drills are closely related to the jing drills we did this past December (reference: day 84). for today, the drills revolved around us working in pairs, with one partner playing the role of an attacker throwing punches (any selection, any rhythm, any combination) and the other partner playing the role of the defender reacting to the punches.

Sifu asked that the defender work on "playing" with the incoming strikes, so that the reaction was not always to launch a counter-attack, but rather to get a "feel" for the attacker's punches. from here, we were supposed to then try to "stick" to the punches, to better sense the opponent and simultaneously frustrate their movements. after this, we were then supposed to try and position ourselves as we were working with the opponent in a way that could allow us to get into a position to launch our own attack. essentially, all this was following the series of jing drills, with Sifu noting what he wanted for each one:

• tin jing (listening)--as the opponent's strike came in, Sifu asked us to play with it by launching light strikes (e.g., light as a feather or paint brush) to the attacker's eyes to confuse or blind the opponent. in addition, we were supposed to use the light strikes to get an awareness of our opponent's motions, rhythm, and intent. to do these things, Sifu said we needed to brush the opponent at the same time they tried to hit us. to do this, Sifu said we needed to coordinate our brush strokes with our footwork and bodies, so that we dodged in several different ways: left-right, forward-back, top-down, or rotationally. he pointed out that the movement could actually be a combination of these directions.
• hwa jing (absorbing, sticking, deflecting)--in combination or in distinction from tin jing, Sifu also told us to make contact with the opponent's strikes, but not to do so by blocking (i.e., direct force-on-force contact). rather, we needed to avoid direct opposition of force vectors. Sifu said that we wanted to use our tin jing to gain a sensitivity to what our opponent is doing (or wants to do), and then in turn use this sensitivity to receive and stick to their movements. his allows 1) greater sensitivity to their actions and intent, 2) helps control and redirect their movement, 3) frustrates their actions and intent, and 4) enables better implementation of your response.
• na jing (positioning)--Sifu reminded us to think of movement: left-right, forward-back, top-down, rotationally. eventually, besides exercising tin jing and hwa jing, we needed to work on positioning ourselves in ways that allow us to exploit weaknesses in the opponent's defenses and disrupt vulnerabilities in their structure.
• fa jing (projection)--for today, Sifu asked we limit our fa jing, but that we try to use na jing to get to positions to initiate our own attacks, whether they were throws, locks, punches, pressure points, etc. he said that for today we could try applying the techniques from side B, palm changes 1-3.
  

i ended up working with John Eagles on this. i have to say these kinds of drills are becoming a favorite component of the training for me. partly because i've started to learn enough about kung fu (not just bagua, but also tai chi and chang quan) that i actually have things to try and apply and experiment on: specifically, principles and techniques using those principles. it helps me see how the theory is applied, and allows experimentation that enables further understanding of just how principles can be expressed. out of this, i'm starting to see the following:

• principles are really more important than techniques. between everything i'm learning (bagua, tai chi, chang quan, miscellanous shuai jiao, etc.), i'm seeing the same principles and same physics being used over and over again, with the various styles just simply using techniques that express those principles in different ways. it's like a selection of related languages--there's French, German, English, etc., all seemingly unique and different, but they're all used to express the same meanings, same intent, same messages, same emotions, same ideas. another way is music--there's a set number of notes in the scale, a set number of keys, but yet the notes and keys are expressed with different emphases and different timing and different combinations. which makes me think 1) you learn techniques to a point that you understand how principles and physics are used and applied, 2) you leave techniques to free your mind to receive the supreme chaos of human interaction (and that's really all a fight is: a very, very, very hostile form of human interaction), 3) you get to principles and physics to react to the supreme chaos of human interaction, and 4) you use principles and physics to make whatever techniques you need. hopefully, out of this, you survive.
• the jing drills require that you have and develop a coordination between body parts; nothing ever acts alone. this is what we've talked about (and i suppose is common in martial arts) at various times as the 6 harmonies: hands coordinate with feet, elbows with knees, shoulders with hips). Phunsak had said he is finding this is universal across fighting styles--even in his fencing class, the instructor has stressed that every hand action is accompanied by an attendant foot action.
• the jing drills also require footwork and timing. this, however, is something closely related with the 6 harmonies. the footwork is necessary to dodge and position yourself in a way that you can counter-attack. the timing is necessary to sense and react to the attacker.
• bagua is about closing. you can use bagua to stay at various distances. but so much of the throws, locks, pressure points, and even strikes involve footwork and timing that positions you close to your opponent. as a result, the intuitive reflex that is required by bagua is to close with the opponent, rather than stay away. part of me suspects this means that bagua is naturally compatible with other "close-in" styles like shuai jiao, and i wonder if this is part of the reason Jason has a shaui jiao-esque flavor in his bagua, with so many shaui jiao-type techniques applied to finish entries--it's just a natural fit. however, another part of me also suspects that this isn't necessarily true, in that closing with an opponent simply serves to put you within range of a greater arsenal of attacks (i.e., you're not just reliant on long-distance strikes, but now have them and also an array of shorter strikes).
  

following the jing drills, Sifu spoke with us briefly about the idea of intent. repeating the demonstration of a counter-joint lock to an opponent's closed grip, he said that intent plays a major role in the effectiveness of techniques in martial arts--not just the "internal" styles (e.g., bagua, xing-yi, tai chi, etc.), but for martial arts in general. he stressed that this is a principle that has to be understood to realize the full potential of the techniques. intent, or yi (such as the in "intent" in xing-yi or yi quan), apparently enables greater exploitation of physics, just as much as other principles like vortices, yin-yang, etc.

i have to note this is a concept that i'm struggling to learn. mostly because i'm coming from a Western science background, where so much of my idea of knowledge involves empirical verification, which means being able to test things that can be seen--oh yeah sure, stuff like quantum physics and mathematics involves all kinds of things that can't be seen, but you know what i mean: i don't live in quantum physics in my everyday life, i live in Newtonian physics. yi isn't something i can see, and having never really dealt with the concept before, it's hard to pick up (this is a classic problem posed by Greek philosophers, and is reminiscent of a Zen koan: how do you explain the color blue to someone who is blind? especially someone blind from birth?).

i suppose there are examples i can work with--like the way tai chi uses a focus of force vectors into the feet to create a greater resultant counter-force into the opponent, or the way bagua uses this in the same way to generate more power in rotational motion. but i'm still scratching my head in terms of understanding how this works with yi going through the center of gravity, dantian, internal organs, or anything else.

of course, i'm still struggling to pick up "chi" as a physical expression of energy (again, for someone coming from an empirical Western science background: how do you describe the color blue to a blind man who has been blind from birth?), and i suspect there are some relationships between yi and chi (i.e., one can be used to affect the other), so you can probably see the reason why. every once in awhile, i think i'm getting it, but the inconsistency of me being able to find and use yi (or chi) is maddening...made even more so by the fact that it seems to be the times that you don't try that things work. which raises the obvious questions: 1) how do you make something happen when that something only works without intent, but the very act of deciding to have it happen is an expression of intent (yeah, quantum physics: Schrodinger's cat: how do you measure something when the very act of measuring changes the property measured?); 2) so trying guarantees yi doesn't work, but not trying means yi sometimes works and sometimes doesn't work, which means how do you try to not try to make it work all the time?; and 3) martial arts requires you be able to control yourself (your state of mind and state of body) in order to be able to initiate action and inaction to control surroundings (your opponent) to produce a desired outcome (your survival, and hopefully, your victory), which implies you be able to consistently make things (principles, physics, techniques, yi) work--but how do you get consistency without being to make it happen without trying?

this is all very Taoist: you cannot force the way, you can only work with the way; if you try to force the way, the way will elude you; if you elude the way, the way will come to you; the way is not always the way; sometimes, things that are not the way are the way. so yi and chi are like the way, but not really the way. kind of like the Matrix: no one can tell you what the Matrix is, you just have to experience it for yourself--although, this is from a classic Taoist proverb: no one can show you the Tao to find the Tao, you have to know the Tao to find the Tao...

i've used Taoism to work with things like love and surfing (hey, it just works, trust me...love is the Tao. surfing is the Tao. and, of course, no one can explain it to you, you just have to know it for yourself). so maybe i do have things to work with after all.

but still, i'm guessing this is going to be awhile.

bagua leg form

we finished the day with John, Jay, and i staying to have a private session with Sifu on the bagua leg form. we went further into it, up until about the halfway point. the bulk of the time was spent covering applications, although we did several iterations of the entire form to date. there were a couple of awkward points in the form for me--particularly landing on one leg off the tornado kick--but as usual this is just something that takes practice to work out.

i left around 3, with John and Jay staying with Phunsak to get more instruction from Sifu. i had activities scheduled with my mom, and so i had to leave on a pretty strict timetable. but i figured things were winding down anyway, since Sifu himself had wanted to take more time for family things since his wife was visiting this week.