I’ve been out cold for like the past week or so. This is really taking a toll on my training as I’m just too dizzy to really do anything useful. At times, I tried to do some standing, but that doesn’t work out too well b/c I want to sleep. When I wake up, I want to get back in bed and no nothing. However, I have still been able to read about taiji, so I guess that’s a good thing??

Currently, I’m reading Mastering Yang Style Taijiquan to get the skinny on the details of the form. So far, it’s not bad. I’m about up to the point of the first grasps swallow tail sequence and it’s interesting to read about the “important points” or fine points for each posture. I’ve also noticed that I’ve really been able to do the taiji “empty step” quite well in the yang form, that is stepping with heel first and slowly transferring the weight as I do the move. I think it was a bit harder in chen b/c most of the steps were to the side but in yang, it’s all about keeping it in front.

After reading Rick’s Current Training it’s prompted me to do a little write up of my own current training.

My current training focuses on – yiquan, silk reeling, chen taiji with some yang taiji sprinkled in. One thing I’m really trying to emphasize and make it core to my training is the zhan zhuang of the yiquan system. I’m not up to speed on the whole system as I’m still trying to take the first step, that is consistent standing. Fong Ha has his whole “100 hrs” thing, he challenges anyone who is interested in standing for whatever reasons to do at least 100 hrs of standing before coming to any conclusions. As of now, I’m currently at 11 hrs and 15 mins as kepted by my trackslife track title 100 hrs of zhanzhuang. Within the standing, I’m currently focusing on three main postures: (1) wuji – hands at sides, (2) Not sure what this one is called but hands around dantien with arms rounded, (3) universal post aka hugging tree with arms around heart height and rounded. Havne’t gotten into the visualizations or anything like that, just trying to let me thoughts flow naturally. Currently doing 15 min sessions, but will most likely bump them up to 20 min sessions after the new year.

Silk Reeling.. ahh.. this is the one that I know I should be doing more of but not really focusing time on it. For me, I’d much rather do some form work than silk reeling. The Taoist Sanctuary has some interesting notes on silk reeling. Would be very hard for someone to follow without first getting some instruction on it, but it’s very precise and what needs to happen at what point. I feel ashamed to admit it, but I haven’t really done any silk reeling in over a week!

But then again, the above statement is not entirely true if you consider the form to be comprised of silk reeling. Take any movement of the form and break it down into it’s silk reeling components. Is that not working on silk reeling? To me, that’s like the whole 2 birds with one stone thing. I have to admit though that it’s very difficult to work on the form and try to break down each movement into its silk reeling component while not detrimenting the flow of the form. Gotta try to do the 50/50 thing, don’t focus too much on silk reeling, but then again don’t forget to think about it.

I was doing laojia yilu this morning and really enjoyed working on the silk reeling aspect. After the single whip, there’s a couple of double handed ward back movements and it was really fun to break that down into silk reeling components. I was gauging the timing of my movement. Does the double arm ward back coordinate with the weight shift back? At times, I would shift too quickly back and others not quickly enough. To me, the form can really address all aspects of training: stance, central equilibrium, silk reeling, mind, the whole shabang the but hard part is to know when you’re ready to start layering. Layering too much, as I have done in the past, results in a lot of discouragement and the desire to quit all together. Reminds me of the time in which I refused to do double handed silk reeling for a month b/c I was so discouraged with it.

In the chen taiji form aspect, I’ve mainly been focusing on the laojia yilu but will throw in the modern 38 form from time to time when I want to mix things up a bit. Personally, I like the laojia better and feel it has more body harmony than the 38 form, but the 38 form is a bit more interesting with the sprinkles of xinjia interspersed throughout.

The sprinkles of yang are mainly there to satiate my desires to jump and jump and jump. This satisfies the “am I missing something important in X style?” or “is X style really the key and answer?” type of stuff. This is one of my major faults and I blame it on myself. Think too much without doing. But which one should I be doing? Which one is better to focus on? Is yang more high level than chen? Is yang a more refined version of chen? Is yang where it’s at? Is chen more mechanical and yang more energetic? Does chen hold the secrets to taiji? Or perhaps they’re all wrong and Hao is where it’s at as that’s one of the most energetic forms out there.. ? You see.. easy to fall into this trap and yang is there for me to play around with concepts and techniques. This satisfies my comparitive inquiring nature.

What’s really funny.. well not really so, but I think it is, I’ve been debating on “which yang” is the “way to go”? Is is the Yang Cheng Fu (YCF) yang via the Yang Zhenduo line? Or is it the Dong family yang as Dong was one of YCF head students? Or perhaps it the TT Liang yang via the Cheng Man Ching (CMC) camp with the energetic modifications (fair lady’s wrist, parallel feet to open lower back energy gate, modified wave hands to “massage” the qi in the body)?? Personally, I’m really quite fond of the Dong family yang set. To me, Dong Tu Ling’s form is just the shite! His posture, stance, and focus is just amazing!

Ugh.. there I go again. Need to stop with all the wandering and just start walking down the path. But which path should I take, the one one the left or the one on the right? hehehe..

Due to some recent shifts in our schedules, decided to break up the training session a bit. Last night I did 15 mins of zhan zhuang and it was pretty good. It felt as if I was holding a bit too much tension in my thighs.. AGAIN… but I guess that’s a good thing. Not really sure but I’m enduring and pushing through it. To compensate, I brought my stance up a bit higher. I then started getting visions of Fong Ha doing the stand and his posture is quite high. I was playing around a bit with the shifting of left to right as my right hip was feeling tense again. My thoughts started to race so I closed my eyes and focused internally. Thought about my breathing while listening behind. The listening behind actually helps quite a bit and it’s also mentioned in the recent issue of Tai Chi Magazine.

Woke up early this morning (around 4:30am) and did some zhan zhuang for a couple of mins to get my body and mind adjusted from being asleep and then went into some short forms. Lately, I’ve mostly been concentrating on the long forms but if I’m short on time, then I only get through the first section or so of the form and I miss out on all the other fun moves! This morning I decided to do the 24 short form for kicks. It has been such a long time since I went through this form but at the same time it felt kinda nice. I could really feel my “chen creep” when I was doing the repluse monkeys and had to really make an effort not to let the chen style take over. Then when I go to the grasps swallows sequence, I debated a bit on whether to do the sequence the wushutaiji way (initial ward off with one hand at side) or the more traditional way (initial ward off with both hands up, kinda like a double press). I did the first set the modern way and did the other side the more traditional way. Personally, I prefer the more traditional way as it makes the rollback feel much more connected. It was fun doing the kicks in the form though I stumbled a bit when I made the transition to snake creeps down. I didn’t go too low in the snakes creep as I really wanted to maintain my structure and not let my knee go beyond my instep, or point behind the balls of the feet. Overall, it was pretty interesting and I may do it again though I wasn’t too fond of all the repititions of ward off and brush knees in the beginning. I actually prefer doing the 1st section of the long form as a replacement.. who knows.. we’ll see how I feel tomorrow

I then felt the urge to do the chen 38 set for comparison. This set was developed by Chen Xiao Wang (CXW) and is said to contain elements of the old frame (laojia) and new frame (xinjia) though I really can’t distinguish on a per movement basis what frame each posture comes from. I have a rough idea of the key postures but that’s about it. The form started off nice and felt a really good flow from the beginning. I stumbled a bit on the transition between brush knees and cover puch as I hadn’t really done the whole “lift leg up and push” in quite some time. When I got to the “step back whirl arms” (aka repluse monkey) sequence in chen, I started to question the execution a bit. In the chen set, I was taught the palm aligns horizontally. In doing it this way, I felt as if my elbow could easily be compromised and someone could perform the basic elbow/arm qinna on me. In the yang set, the palm aligns vertically and is more of a “push and pull” while I felt the chen way was more of a “split”. I’ve actually seen CXW doing this both way, palm vertical and horizontal. I like the flow and energy of the vertical palm way as well as liking the hand positions of the yang set.

To me, the yang set felt more like a “seizing” movement whereas the chen felt more like a deflect/attack movement. The main reason I felt this way is due to the position of the yin hand. For the repulse monkey set, the yang hand is the “forward” hand and the yin set is the “rear” hand. In the yang, the rear hand is palm up and at the side of the waist. From my trainings in liuhebafa (LHBF) (for more, see Wai Lun Choi’s LHBF Site) I was taught the most efficient way to grab and pull someone in is to use your body and to be able to fully use your body, the pulling hand cannot go beyond the body. This is a big reason why the hand stops either before or at the side of the waist as more power can be generated. To me, this is a much better alignment to do the seizing application of repluse monkey. Due to the location of the rear hand in chen, it appears to me and was shown to me as a deflect application where the rear hand deflects to the side while the forward hand strikes the exposed body. Note, these are not the be all and end all applications for these moves, just ones that came to my mind when comparing.

Overall, without going too indepth, the chen form felt nice but I’m starting to feel a disconnect in more and more places in the set. Again, this could be due to lack of my own experience. One of the places is during the heel kick squences. Before the kicks, the is sort of an opening seqences of the arms that’s mostly a “side attack” kind of thing. To me, the while side attack and motion of arm is a bit disconnected. I think this may have a lot to do with many of the chen applications use the back and side. From what I learned in LHBF and yang, most of the attacks are focused on front as you never want to turn your back to your opponent so the goal is to keep your opponent in your center line. hmm….

This is really strange as I’m still feeling tension in my right hip. It’s getting to the point that doing zhanzhuang just feels funny and I feel as if I’m over-correcting myself to get the posture right and to reduce the hip tension. I often look down to check my alignment to try and make sure that I am balanced from side to side. I’m not sure what it’s from. Before, I used to carry my son a lot and I caught myself sticking out my right hip to help compensate for the added weight, but since I made that realization, I’ve been working hard sinking into the right thigh instead of letting the weight jot out into my right hip.

Actually, one thing I’ve been questioning is the position of my cell phone. I have a “pouch” type of thing that looks like similar to this guy and while it’s nice and all, it does sit on my right hip!! I’ve questioned changing places for my cell phone before and thought of carrying it around in my manbag (Timbuk2 Euro Tote) but then I can’t feel the vibrate alert on my phone as I tend to turn the volume off. I did just recently switch the location of my pouch and to my surprise, I did feel some tension release from my right hip! Holy hipsters, Batman! Perhaps my phone is the culprit after all!

Speaking of manbags.. it’s kinda hard to “mind” them. At times, I want to just make a quick run to get something but I don’t want to carry my bag with me. I just reach into it and grab my wallet and I’m out. However, there have also been times when I’m out that I wish I had my pda/ipod/notebook with me that I do carry in the bag! What’s a man to do? heheh.. Maybe it’s time to bit the bullet and utilize the full capabilities of my bag as it does have room for a cell phone, in fact, it has a specialized pocket for it!