day 249: the humbling spear and a little fisting

concepts:

• dantian
• twisting
  

lessons:

• spear (chaang)
• chen tai chi pao quan
  

we had a smaller Sunday group today, with just me, Josan, and Phunsak. we spent most of the morning working on the spear, since that seemed to be the biggest problem area (at least it was for me), with a little time for chen tai chi pao quan.

spear (chaang)

spear is just hard. that's my take on it. at least for now. and i don't mean hard in terms of strength, but more in terms of coordination. i'm not even at a point where i can develop strength, since i can't even get the coordination part of it down. i've been working on this during the past couple of weeks, since it's proving quite puzzling. just when i think i'm getting it, it turns out that no, no i'm not. not even close. quite befuddling.

Sifu had us work on same basics we worked on last time. which is fine, because i'm having an excruciating time getting this down. i just don't have the muscle memory--or even any sense of any movement close. as a result, i'm finding i'm actually spending the bulk of time experimenting with different sensations and different actions to see if they generate the requisite behavior in the spear. it's complicated by the fact that a lot of the sensations and actions are those that occur within the deep muscle tissue of the lower abdomen, and so are within the core and hence not easy to see. it's something you have to feel...except that it's hard to know a feeling that you've haven't experienced before.

Sifu broke things down a little bit more today, asking me to focus on just making arcs with the spear as opposed to circles. this helped a little bit, but i still had problems coordinating the movement of the core with the intended action of the spear--moving in one direction of the arc requires one set of actions, but moving in the other direction requires another, and the issue is figuring out which set of actions corresponds to which direction. and the actions are not just in the core with the dantian, but also in the kua, pelvis, spine, shoulders, legs, and arms, since the spear point not only has to trace an arc but also has to twist as it does so.

i did make some progress, in that i could begin to feel the internal muscular work that is involved in moving and controlling the spear. and i can see that it really does involve the dantian. i could actually some soreness in the deep muscle tissue, with tightness that felt like somebody had stuck a pole through by abdomen that went in at a point just below my navel in the front and exited at a parallel point in the back. i mentioned this to Sifu, and he nodded, saying that is essentially the 2 points relating to the dantian, and this indicated that i was working on the right area.

after awhile, Sifu did a few demonstrations showing why these movements were important in offensive and defensive actions. the arcs, in combination with the twisting of the shaft, served to parry and deflect the opponent's spear, in a way that opened gates while protecting yours. in addition, the twisting helps maintain contact with the opponent's spear, improving your control over them and reducing the amount of muscular effort necessary than would be required with a direct force-on-force parry.

Sifu noted that this is really just an application of the jing concepts we've worked with: ting, hwa, na, and fa. moreover, the idea is the same, in that the goal is to first sense the opponent's actions and intent (ting jing), to receive and deflect them (ting jing), then control them (na jing), and then project power (fa jing). he mentioned that the concepts are the same, in that at some level you can do these things without necessarily having to initiate contact with their weapon...of course, this is something to work on at a later stage.

chen tai chi pao quan

we spent the last part of class going further into pao quan. after spear, this was easier--not easy, but easier. we went through a section of repeating actions, which i realized was just some of the basics that Sifu had originally had us work on some months ago before the summer. this made things a little bit quicker in terms of learning, although i think we're going to have to repeat this quite a few more times before we get them down.

we finished with this, and left for a post-class lunch.