day 186: chen push hands and kuen wu erlu

concepts:

• no force
• hwa jing
• na jing
  

lessons:

• chen push hands
• kuen wu erlu
  

i almost forgot to write this post for last Sunday's class. things have been a little busy. i'll try to be as comprehensive as i can, but i also need to keep this post a little short, since i've got a number of things to catch up on.

chen push hands

we started Sunday with chen push hands. for today, Sifu said he wanted us to move on to the next stage in push hands training. so far, we began with stationary push hands focusing on developing ting jing (sensing), then did moving push hands using ting jing. now, he wanted us to start working on stationary push hands using hwa jing and na jing (redirection and control, respectively).

Sifu made a number of points by way of introduction:

• this is following a progression in the chen tai chi curriculum towards helping us learn how to use tai chi in combat. this 3rd stage would be followed by the logical step of moving push hands using hwa jing and na jing, but that for now it was going to be enough of a challenge to do things in a stationary position.
• the idea now is to do more than just sense our opponent's movements, but to then sense holes in their defenses and penetrate them in a way that sets us up to attack them.
• in using hwa jing and na jing, we have to use no force. if we attempt to use force, the opponent can sense this and respond before we attack. this means that we have to be able to penetrate their defenses without utilizing force or signaling our intentions.
• in order to accomplish the above, we need to stay relaxed and loose.
• for now, it helps to stay within the circular motions of the push hands training, and using the positioning of our bodies and limbs within the circular motions to naturally locate and penetrate openings.
• for now we should not use fa jing, because that would tempt us to use force in this stage and prevent us from achieving the goals of these exercises.
  

this turned out to be quite a wrinkle. i started with Jo-San as a partner, then Phunsak and then Sifu. with all of them, i found myself constantly using force, making it easy for each of them to defend themselves against me. Jo-San commented that he could sense every time i attempted to attack him, since he could feel my muscles tense. Phunsak advised me to just let things flow naturally and work on relaxing. with Sifu, i couldn't even start the drill.

this is way harder than it looks. this is going to take a bit more work on my part, since i clearly have an instinctive behavior pattern of tensing my muscles to engage in movement. i'm going to have to take some time to unlearn this.

kuen wu erlu

we finished the day by going further into kuen wu erlu. i'd forgotten some things from the last class session, and i had to take a little time to review what we'd done. what's complicating things is that erlu is a little different from yilu, but similar enough that it's very to get confused as to which form you're doing. i'm having to take care in this form to make sure i'm doing the right movements.

we ended the day with that, and i went to lunch with Phunsak, since Sifu had to stay and provide some private lessons for some other students.