12/15 Tai-chi
CKS Hall was mostly back to normal after the ruling DPP changed the inscription on the massive gates last week after barricading them behind barbed wire to keep protesters away. I wasn’t able to come last week due to a couple of Jiayi gigs with my band in any case. A Christmas rock music concert was thumping from the center of the square, but fortunately nobody was crowding our group on the balcony.
I did forms for a while and got some instruction for backwards stepping from Teacher Xu. I’d been having some problems stepping back with my left foot as it seemed to put too much pressure on that knee for some reason, but it turns out that I wasn’t twisting in the right places, and the places I did twist, I “connected” too much. I have that problem in general with tuishou as well.
Little Qin arrived and did the sword form with a wooden stick. Afterwards we did some tuishou, which was instructive. Little Qin tends to grab wrists and lock them in place, but unlike the Tree Root Master, he doesn’t react violently when you try to push him, instead either relaxing and melting away from the push, or simply not reacting, secure in the futility of pushes from a certain angle.
He also gave me some advice for sword, echoing Teacher Xu’s earlier instruction to project one’s focus and energy along the blade. But Little Qin also added this: “Project your awareness to a point just beyond the tip of the blade,” he said, telling me to practice this by poking at things with the sword or whatever I happened to have on me at the time. “It’s like tossing stones.” The reason for this was, he said, that when we’re are in an actual confrontation, we tend to withdraw our awareness a little, so in that case our focus will be at the right place. The same goes for empty-handed movements, he added.
