snail's pace

In recent practices, the theme seems to be slow advancement.

Tonight’s class in Sha Family sword (沙式太极剑), I was hoping for a surge forward in the (first) two-person paired form. Instead, we got a (good and needed) review of the (second) 36-motion tai ji jian form, including four repetitions in all directions, which really messed with the mind if you let it, or didn’t mess with the mind if you didn’t let it. Do you know what I mean?

After basics, 36-form practice, and breaks, there was precious little time left for the two-person form we are learning. We reviewed the first several motions several times and learned a grand total of one new motion in the last three minutes of class. No complaints, mind you – every minute of class is valuable, and I appreciate the review.

Last Sunday, we had a special 5-hour class focusing on mantis fist or tang lang quan. It’s a small and experienced group and my only real chance to review the forms of Six Harmonies Mantis Fist (六合螳螂拳) as taught by Liu Jing Ru Laoshi.

My daughter was not satisfied with four hours of Daddy Time all morning, so I took her to the afternoon Mantis class. She was pretty good (as much as can be expected of a 7-year-old) and ran through the Long Fist Staff form (长拳棍术) with me a few times, but wouldn’t run through any of the empty-hand routines in front of others with me.

Between intervals of playing and practicing with my daughter, I reviewed Duan Chui 短捶 pretty well and reviewed the first 1/3 or so of shuang feng 双封 from last month. We drilled that many times and then learned a grand total of one new motion.

I suppose this theme applies to last week (or has it been two weeks ago already??) when Akamine Sensei came to Tokyo from Okinawa for a weekend seminar in Ryukyu Kobudo. Actually there was no advancement into new techniques for me, only pushing deeper into the already-practiced forms. It was enough, and yet I still felt a hunger, watching as others reviewed forms which I have been through but don’t know well.

So these are days of slow advancement and much consolidation for me, both satisfying and slightly frustrating at the same time. Anyway, I will strengthen my foundations and get ready for there will certainly be great blasts of advancement in the future.

(photo of a snail found by my daughter at the tang lang quan practice space)

Words That Hurt (1)

I have made a couple trips out to Kunming in Yunnan Province, China, to train in the Sha family style with my teacher here in Japan and a few other students/ teachers. Both trips were excellent in every way, with top-notch instruction from Sha Jun Jie (son of Sha Guo Zheng) and his wife Li Bin, among others.

On one trip I concentrated solely on the xing yi jian form (sword form for Xing Yi Quan) and made good progress.

On the next trip, I may have tried for too much, going for both a xing yi kicking form (形意连环腿) and a basic, 24-move tong bei quan (通背拳) form.

Let me explain – at my regular classes and on special occasions in Tokyo, I have been working on both the Sha family tai ji quan forms and two of the three tai ji jian forms for a few years. Initially, that was all I sought – my teacher here in Tokyo taught them, I learned them, nothing more to it.

But as I got deeper into the Sha family system – and especially after my 2007 visit to Kunming, when they had a massive celebration for the 105th anniversary of Sha Guo Zheng, I wanted to get more deeply into the Sha family style. They meld the three standard internal arts (tai ji quan, ba gua zhang, xing yi quan) with another art, tong bei quan.

And, in their family style, motions from each of these arts cross over into all the others. So, just by learning their tai ji quan forms, I had to learn the most basic elements of their tong bei, xing yi, and ba gua. So by learning more about these other arts, I could improve my Sha family tai ji.

It made sense to learn more about these other arts within their system. But I had already invested several years in learning the xing yi quan and ba gua zhang of my Tokyo teacher’s other teacher (one of them…), Liu Jing Ru. I didn’t want the interference of two systems of ba gua or xing yi, so I have largely avoided the Sha family forms in these arts. Xing yi jian and the xing yi kicking form are both exceptions, as there is nothing like them (so far, anyway) in the style taught by Liu Jing Ru. Thus no cross-over interference, no problem. And Tong Bei? Nothing like it in my repertoire thus far, no problem other than the division of time.

So there I was, getting intensive one-on-one instruction from the bosses themselves. The Venerable Tai Ji Ladies of Tokyo were off doing their tai ji thing, so I was getting a lot of attention. Xing Yi Lian Huan Tui was first and a lot of fun, great to finally do a lot of foot techniques in xing yi quan (which otherwise has very few foot techniques).

Then on into the 24-motion form of tong bei quan, also fun and informative, as some of its motions also appear in the Sha family tai ji forms. And there was my problem. One of those motions involves sinking into a cross-legged crouching position. The right palm stabs down across the left side of the body while the left palm guards up near the right ear. Then you rise and …

You rise and do one motion in Lian Huan Tui. And you rise and do a different motion in Tong Bei. (And still a different one in tai ji, though that was irrelevant at the time). So near the end of our visit, Sha Laoshi suddenly called on us to demonstrate what we had learned.

Damn, I really wanted just one more day, even one more hour to consolidate the just-finished form…the Venerable Tai Ji Ladies showed their new stuff and showed it well. I showed the Tong Bei form as it was the fresher of the two, and got stuck at just that motion described above, not yet having fully separated the two new forms.

“你忘了” were his only words. Ni wang le, you forgot it. Three short words and the look on his face - they cut like a knife. They were final, and I got little more attention on that visit.

I missed last year’s trip (finances) and may have only one more chance before relocating to the US. I know I will be going back to Kunming. And I don’t ever want to hear those words again.

(photo from 2007 Kunming trip, my Liu-influenced ba gua next to the big boss – or a photo of him)