Three years and one week of Wu Style

So last week was devoted entirely to the visit of Ma Chang Xun （马长勋) Laoshi and his oldest son and a senior student from Beijing. All are teachers of the Wu (吴) Style of tai ji quan, and made a well-attended visit to Tokyo.

Their visit corresponds almost three years to the day of my introduction to the Wu style. Without warning, Mr. T suddenly introduced a segment of one of the Wu forms to our usual push hands / ba gua zhang class. At the time it seemed like something from outer space, but in retrospect it makes sense, as the push hands we do in that class (and others with Mr. T) is rooted in the Wu Style approach.

I have a terrible and shameful confession to make. I am not, at heart, much of a push hands guy. And – I hesitate to write here in public – there have been times when I have wanted much more ba gua zhang and less push hands in our Wed. AM class.

I have often heard the injunction that you can’t really understand taiji without the push hands element and it was repeated emphatically through the past week. But this time around the words reached more deeply into me and I could feel something very different, a deeper interest in push hands and a different kind of movement in my body. And greater acceptance or openness in my mind.

Another shameful and terrible confession – sometimes I … don’t… like… push hands. There, I said it. The secret is out. Gasp and shudder. I feel the rumbling of the taiji deities above…but once started, I must confess all. There is no holding me back now. In particular, I don’t like the super-fake exaggerated motions some people make when receiving a push. At least when receiving a push from me. I received one of Ma Laoshi’s pushes (probably a very light version) and felt myself propelled backward, and then I knew there is something real going on here.

There is something to be said for being a cooperative partner and showing your partner when they make a good push. But when it just resembles a bad aikido demonstration (oh geez, the aiki-ites are going to lynch me if the taiji deities don’t crush me first) (hey, I said the BAD aikido demos, OK?) when the True Believer is not cooperating but colluding to make the teacher’s technique look very effective, well, it doesn’t sit well with me.

So I must confess to some skepticism and resistance. But that is to push hands in general. I have no complaints about the past week’s seminar. Each day’s lessons were excellent and fulfilling. If anything, the past week did much to open my eyes and heart to what push hands can be.

And in the middle of it, I spent three days with the group who opted to learn the 13-motion form. This was a special treat because it deepened my understanding of what we do on Wednesday mornings tremendously.

There, we do the beginning of what I think is the 45-move Wu-style competition form (though I have also heard it called the 66 form). Day One (2006): we did the opening and a couple subsequent motions. Day Two: opening to single whip. For a couple months, that was all we did. Then I went to a different part of Japan for a couple weeks’ work. When I returned, the group had surged past me in a cruel conspiracy. By July I had caught up with everyone else….and that is as far as we have gone in the form (ru feng si bi??). For weeks, months, now years afterward, my post-practice notes read “no advance in the form today…” We typically do the portion of the form once per class then move directly into push hands.

There is much overlap with the 13-motion form. I have done nothing but the 13-motion form for nearly two weeks now. This afternoon I tried out the portion of the longer form I know and found myself quite rusty.

Even more strange, my body hesitated to start any other styles of taiji while reviewing today. I got it moving through the Sha Style forms which have been my focus for some time. But anything else was completely blocked. So the repetitions are deep, now it is time to move toward better integration.

My head (and body) remains full of so much gleaned during the past week. But most important, and most deep, may be my increased awareness of my old friend, fang song. Relax.

As the older son told me at the end of one day’s session, it is very easy to practice taiji, but it is not so easy to bring fang song into our practice, into our lives.