concepts:- habits
- footwork
- center
- stringing
- gloves
- elbows
- chang quan
- bagua
- kyudo
chang quan
the word for my Friday chang quan class was habits. in particular, it was bad habits. Sifu had me do several iterations of chao quan that i've learned to date, and then asked me if i practice on my own outside of class. i said yes, and then he nodded, saying that it was good but that i've been picking up some bad habits and that we needed to work these out.
apparently, some of my movements have gotten a little sloppy, particularly anything involving a brushing of the hands or anything involving timing of the hands with leg kick or leg step. Sifu noted that there shouldn't be "dead hands" (i.e., hands that remain stationary while the rest of the body is moving) at any time in the movements, and that this is something true of any form of martial art. he also pointed out that the synchronization of moves of different parts of the body are crucial to making any technique work, and so something to really focus on.
fortunately, Sifu didn't think my problems were intractable, and that they would be fixed via 1) a better understanding as to the purpose behind the movements (i.e., the intent, or "yi"), and 2) practice. currently, he can see that my yi is not constant, but tends to flicker in and out during my form, particularly in terms of the direction and expression in my eyes. with more understanding and more practice, he says this will be fixed, and my movements will naturally follow.
we spent the class working on these things, and then finished by going a few more moves into the form.
bagua
this Saturday was a progression from last week, except that Sifu took us all the way through to the end of the form. i hadn't realized we were so close. Sifu cautioned, however, that today was meant to just finish the form, but the next few classes before the winter break were going to be dedicated to refining it, and also practicing it in the classic 9-pole format (note: in bagua, the 9-pole format involves 8 poles situated at the vertices of an octagon and 1 pole in the center). we don't actually have 9 poles, but Sifu said we'd substitute using human stand-ins--which was what the poles were originally meant to represent anyway, so it was just as well to go directly to the original idea.
for today, Sifu emphasized that we concentrate on our dantian (i.e., our "centers"), and visualize it pushing the dantian to the ground as we did the movements in forest palm. he said that this would help us perform the form properly by guiding our stances and actions lower, thereby serving to stabilize our bodies and utilize the ground to generate action/reaction forces. repeating what he told me yesterday, he said he could see this in our movements, and could see the difference between the times we were focusing on sending the dantian lower to the times we were not.
we spent the bulk of class repeating the form, reviewing the actions to polish the movements. with Phunsak going to the doctor, Sifu and i were left to go to lunch together. which was fine, since he and i took the opportunity to go to a Yunannese restaurant and get in the spiciest food we could find--it turns out he and i have the same proclivity and preference for spicy food, but that no one else in the class seems to be close, meaning that both of us have to moderate our spicy food cravings for times like these.
kyudo
kyudo this Saturday evening was eventful. we had a number of firsts, from stringing a bow, to shooting an arrow, to dealing with the nuances of gloves.
the bow stringing was a bit of a surprise. Sensei simply asked us (the beginners) to string some of the dojo's bows, with the simple admonition that we'd seen 16 other people string their bows and so we'd had plenty of examples. Leslie, one of the senior students, was a bit concerned about this, particularly since a mistake in stringing could lead to a shattered bow. she ended up showing us the proper way to string them--it seems pretty straightforward, but it's clear that if you did it the wrong way the results would be catastrophic, both to the bow and you.
the bigger surprise was that Sensei allowed us to shoot. i was able to do a few practice runs of the shooting form while i watched the other people ahead of me in line shoot. still, i have to say that the actual act of holding a bow and arrow physically in your hand changes your perceptions, simply because the physical reality imposes factors that you can't always visualize: the weight of the equipment, the resistance of the materials, the difficulty in working with the bow, the mental concentration to focus on the arrow and target while simultaneously remembering all the other factors.
one of the other students told me that Sensei sometimes allows beginners to do practice shoots with the dojo bows, often about once per month. this time, Sensei had decided that all the beginners had enough prior martial arts experience that we already possessed a lot of the basics involved in terms of physical movements, and that we could make a try at actually shooting. still, this night was still an exception, since none of the beginners even had their own equipment or uniforms, and all of us had only just learned the shooting form in the previous few weeks.
my experience shooting was, to say the least, an adventure. i had difficulty nocking the arrow, i didn't align it properly with the target, and i struggled more than i should have to draw the bow. after all the beginners, Sensei took us aside and held a private tutorial with us. in regards to my issues, he didn't directly address them, but i was able to glean from his comments the following advice:
- nocking the arrow--the mistake is to focus on moving the arrow or the string. nocking the arrow is actually about moving the bow. this is actually easier than moving the other pieces.
- aligning the arrow with the target--this is actually about visualizing the arrow connecting with the target, but involves first visualizing your mind connecting with the target. this is why the form involves the practitioner sighting the target before actually lifting the bow and arrow to draw the bow.
- drawing the bow--here, i had simply forgotten a number of very basic things that i already knew. drawing the bow isn't about pulling with the back. it's actually about expanding the body from the center (or dantian), in a way that the practitioner actually extends the entire body (arms, legs, spine, tailbone, head, etc.) outwards from the center. this engages action/reaction forces from the ground through the feet that then go to the arms, and also lengthens the spine so that it pulls in the scapula. this makes drawing the bow a total body exercise, distributing the draw weight so that it's easier. the end result is that the bow is drawn as the practitioner lowers the bow and arrow. one thing Sensei noted is that it helps to visualize that the elbows are lowering down as the spine goes long, with the elbows lowering in symmetric arcs. the hands and forearms just simply serve to hold the bow, arrow, and string, and release at the point the elbows can extend no longer from each other.
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