day 178: refinement side B cont'd

concepts:

• dynamic bow-and-arrow
• memory
  

forms:

• 64 palms side B
• pao quan
  

we had a surprise visitor, with Andre making a return. he apparently wanted some help reviewing the miao dao, so had shown up with his weapons. we ended up having a conversation regarding miao dao purchases, particularly after he saw the one i bought in Las Vegas, and especially after talking with Phunsak about a potential order.

64 palms side B

Phunsak ended up working with Andre on the miao dao, so we had John Eagles take over leading the group through 64 palms side B. we repeated the practice pattern from last week, reviewing each palm change in a line. during a few breaks, i also took the opportunity to review side A, since it suddenly occurred to me that i was starting to mix a few of the palm changes from both sides with each other (something not desirable, and definitely an issue)...it's quite funny how memory works--if you don't keep testing it, it can fade and deteriorate with surprising alacrity.

as a surprise, Art also arrived, bringing with him Phunsak's bagua dao. it is a monstrous sword, shaped like a 2-handed sabre, but extending a full 5 feet. it's quite heavy, and not something you're going to use with the dexterity of a smaller weapon like a jian, but very much a lethal weapon in that it could easily cleave through a large animal (like a horse or a cow). i was shocked to see it.

Art's arrival with the bagua dao essentially provided an excuse to end the class, since by this time we were nearing noon. we took a few extra minutes when Andre asked to review the kuen wu jian form, and i joined him and Phunsak to do a few iterations of the form. after this, the entire group went to lunch.

pao quan

regarding chang quan, i had my second private session with Sifu on pao quan yesterday. we went back through the section that i had learned the 1st day, and then went further to about the halfway point of the form. the focus was on refining the movements and understanding the physics of each technique.

i was a little perplexed by the initial walking section, which involves a duck-like walk with the hands upraised (similar to the arm position in bagua's big bird). apparently, the walk is supposed to be a progression of bow-and-arrow stances forward, with no up-or-down movement and the forward momentum generated from the extended rear leg pushing off the ground. this seemed to pose all sorts of vexing coordination issues for me, and i ended up having to take some time to really focus on this.

this lasted about 2 hours, at which point my mind was hitting the saturation phase, and i was relieved to end things for the lesson.