Kind of a rough day today, but a good one.
The Liu Jing Ru seminar is going great – but already half over, too fast as usual. He comes to Tokyo for a short two weeks each year. I had been focusing on ba gua zhang and xing yi quan but last year opted for my first taste of tang lang quan and was quite pleased.
This year I chose tang lang quan for the first two days (Saturday and Sunday). Days 3 and 4 (Tues-Wed), being in the middle of the week, have much lower attendance. Running the circuit through all three groups runs Liu Laoshi ragged, so today and tomorrow are BGZ / XYQ only, no tang lang quan.
OK, back to the ba gua zhang for me. 9:30 AM – opening remarks are short, we have all already stretched, so we are ready to circle by about 9:32. He starts with the ba gua zhang group (the XYQ people are told to review for a bit). He calls me out in front of all and has me start circling. By 9:33 I knew it was going to be a long morning. He totally reworked me on just the first main palm, completely kicked and fixed my ass.
Sure, I had sped up my ba gua zhang review in recent days, but especially after a new blast of tang lang quan to get on top of….
Anyway I survived the morning and learned a lot and all that. We are in the middle of the 64 palms which, when being learned, seem like about 647 palms but who is counting.
Good and bad news after that – I have work in Beijing (the first international “combat games”) on Friday and Saturday, fly back to Tokyo on Sunday. If I am lucky and there are no traffic jams, I will make it back just in time for the goodbye dinner on Sunday. But I will miss the last two days’ training, pian pian.
Well, I have my network set up and will pick up the BGZ and TLQ (and, in other classes, will slowly get the XYQ) that I miss on the final weekend. So I will get there in the end, but I really wish I could spend the last two days here in Tokyo with Mr. L.
More to come on his visit. And I am edging closer to FINALLY finishing my interview with him which has gone on over five sessions so far in various cities and languages.
Enough of this – time for some late night circling.
1 comment:
Holy crap, was there any sleeping involved? Many styles, many movements, many techniques, many opinions ... but it's all the same right? Who knows. I'd love to hear about your reflections after the whirlwind has calmed.
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