day 187: chao quan, forest palm, and kyudo

concepts:

• bridges and transitions
• center
• release
  

lessons:

• chang quan
• bagua forest palm
• kyudo
  

this Saturday was a beautiful day, with temperatures in the very comfortable 80s and bright sunshine. i arrived a little early, partly to get some review work in (i've been struggling to remember the forest palm, and also wanted to review chang quan).

chang quan

my chang quan lesson Friday was a lesson in fitting things before the sunset. this was the first lesson following the time change from Daylight Savings Time, and we found the park getting dark in the middle of my lesson. this served as motivation, with Sifu helping me get further into chao quan. Tommy was finishing his lesson when i arrived, but elected to stay and observe what i was learning.

we took a few moments at the beginning to address some questions i had regarding applications. i notice that it's a little easier for me now to see some of the applications in chao quan, especially after having gone through the applications in pao quan. however, there are some things that are quite mystifying, and i needed Sifu to demonstrate for me the intent behind the movements.

after this, we went deeper into the chao quan form. a good bit of the section we covered seems very close to tai chi, particularly chen tai chi. in fact, if i didn't know any better, i would say that it was almost identical--but the truth is that chen tai chi came from chang quan, and so everything i'm learning is just proof that chang quan was the foundation for tai chi.

we spent the last part of the lesson just reviewing what Sifu had shown me. this was just as well, because by this time it was dark and very difficult to see (the park apparently doesn't turn on lights in the evening).

bagua forest palm

this Saturday was largely a straightforward progression into forest palm. Sifu started us with a review of the form to date, and then led us further into the form before giving us the rest of class to practice.

one thing Sifu stressed today was the importance of the bridges between the individual techniques in forest palm. he noted that forest palm utilizes the techniques in 64 palms, but does more than just re-arrange them in new combinations and new directions. echoing the comments he made during my chang quan lessons over the past few weeks, he commented that forest palm requires that the techniques be performed with smooth transitions from one to the other, and that the bridges between techniques are thus actually more important than the techniques themselves. this is because the smoothness of transitions serve to maintain, and in some ways increase, the power generation of the movements, enabling the bagua practitioner to defend and attack in any position from any angle at any time--one of the most important things in bagua.

we finished class around 1 and went to lunch.

kyudo

this was my return to kyudo after my 1 weekend hiatus. this class was notably more subdued, with a lower turnout of students. this actually helped me, since it made things easier to concentrate and ask questions. i did a little better today than before, with me being able to remember more things and not being quite so clueless--things weren't entirely smooth, but at least i felt more comfortable.

there were a couple of things i learned today from Sensei, either from his answers to my questions or from his conversations with other students:

• center: kyudo focuses on the center (i.e., the dantian) to a much greater degree than other Japanese martial arts. almost everything in kyudo revolves around the center, including not only breathing (using the center), but the holding of proper posture standing, sitting, or walking (aligning the spine and body relative to the center), the generation of power in shooting (expanding and contracting the body about the center), and the process of aiming and concentrating (focusing the mind on the center). this stunned me--although i guess it shouldn't--since it is entirely consistent with the focus on the dantian that Sifu has always stressed in kung fu.
• release: the notion of release is both physical (releasing the arrow and the bow, as well as releasing bodily tension), mental (releasing the mind from constraints), and spiritual (releasing the spirit from samsara, or worldly concerns). the dojo recites the Heart Sutra, which is a standard Buddhist sutra. i asked Sensei why this particular sutra, and he said that it's not something required by kyudo (in fact, it's something that only he requires for his own dojo), but which he considers a good allegory for the art of kyudo, since it focuses the mind on release in all its forms so as to enable the practitioner to be free to focus and perform the act of shooting. this seems a corollary to the TCMA principles that Sifu has been stressing to me, particularly the idea that a practitioner cannot release their full potential (power and art in body, mind, and soul) without releasing all the tensions within the self (in body, mind, and soul).

i'm struck by these principles, since both emphasize the same principles i've been learning in TCMA. this suggests that kyudo might actually complement my education in TCMA.

Sensei noted that kyudo helped him with his own martial arts training, and also even helped him in his study of other arts (he mentioned calligraphy and tea ceremony). he commented that his own masters had asserted that kyudo could do this, going so far as to say that he could drop study of other arts and focus on kyudo alone for 10 years, but then come back and find that their skill in the other arts had improved. they had told him that kyudo is the only Japanese martial art that seems to have this property, and this adds to the allure that kyudo has in the Japanese martial arts community. Sensei said that had confirmed all this from his own experience.

i don't know if the same thing will happen for me, but observing the consistency in principles being taught, i can at least say that i hope to see some improvement and benefit to my TCMA.