day 211: more of the bagua fist

concepts:

• looseness

lessons:

• bagua fist

this Saturday was a little different from previous days. kyudo today wasn't dedicated to class, but instead to the annual Sukiyaki Festival, which is an event meant to gather the various kyudo dojos in Southern California for a common meal and informal gathering. as a result, i won't post anything here regarding kyudo, but will suffice to say that the meal was good and the company was great and everyone had a very good time.

bagua fist

we further into the fist form, getting into a series that resembled some of the moves in the mantis lien jian form (although, this may simply be because i am confusing all the forms together, but that's another conversation...).

Sifu initially spent time teaching the baji students, and then returned to review our progress. he checked each of us individually, and then made his comments--he said i was still employing too much tension, and that i needed to remember to focus on looseness, particularly in my low stances (where i apparently seem to be tensing up). we spent the class working on this, as well as practicing applications and reviewing the form to date.