way too many commas

Last Tuesday’s class Sifu Rybak described the 6 Harmonies in a context I’ve never thought of them in before and I wanted to start to explore it in a blog to try to solidify my idea of it.  When I think of the 6 Harmonies I usually think about them in terms of the end of a move, how I can sync up my wrists, ankles, knees, elbows, shoulders and hips to generate maximum power, how they may all move at different speeds along different vector lines but then all come together to support one idea/motion.  What she described was how each piece  influences all the other pieces.  Depending on how I move my shoulder, dictates the potential/possibilities of my ankles, depending on how I move my wrist allows me to utilize my hip differently, ect. I used to think about the Harmonies as 6 pieces serving the whole. Later in my training I started thinking that hips and shoulders, the pieces closest to my center, had more influence over the final outcome of a technique than the others...

Tonight a student got hurt. I was leading the students. I was looking after them. And I completely froze when it happened. I panicked. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, or what the next step would even look like. The other instructors jumped into action, getting the rest of the class to turn and take a knee, running to get Sifu Rybak, and I panicked. Brain completely shut down, it wasn’t even that my thoughts were running around scrambling or grasping at the thoughts flying around my head, there was nothing, Just waiting for someone else to come along and take over. I had no sense of responsibility for one of my own students, and this absolutely cannot continue if I am to call myself an instructor. Afterwards Sifu explained that all we had to do, was calm them down and call their mom. Extremely logical. Extremely simple, and I realized through writing this blog that I was worried about doing The Proper thing, not The Logical thing. I wasn’t thinking about what to do with an inju...

The other night we were working on our lion dancing and Sifu Brinker said something that I had never really thought of before, he said that lion dancing is a great way to develop our sparring and application skills. At first this made sense, then it didn’t, and then it did again.  Initially I thought about the usual ways lion dance can supplement and strengthen my kung fu in general, it improves my stamina, and my stances. But then I realized he specifically mentioned sparring and applications which confused me, but thinking about it more tonight I think I see one facet of what he was talking about and it all clicked because of what he added at the end of class, that sparring relies heavily on empathy, and the lion dance specifically can be a tool to develop this. He was talking about how we perform the lion dance, how we need to adopt the personality of the emotions we want our lions to portray, and how this same idea happens in sparring where you are “performing” what you want yo...

As promised, this is going to be a blog about my hand form for the year. For the first time ever I am creating my own hand form to be my focus for the year and I couldn’t be more excited! The hardest part so far was creating the first technique. Having no previous motion and no following technique left me in a place of no context and infinite possibilities, it was very daunting. I also felt a little pressure to define the style for the whole form within that initial motion; with a weapon form I usually let the weapon guide me, I try to follow it’s strengths and my weaknesses to lead me through each thechnique, but with a hand form all I have is me. This has been a double-edged sword (ha! ironic since there’re is a distinct lack of blades!) because on the one hand, I can allow my vocabulary of motion to guide me to what should come next, often the movements come with way less active thought and planning than I usually employ in my form creation, but on the other hand without the gui...

My weapon for this year is Chinese Broadsword… again. I have decided that every time I have a grading year I will choose this as my weapon, and I will add a new section to my form, so this go-around it will be Kayley-Broadsword-II (definetely need to workshop the name). I think it will be a really cool way to measure my growth in between each grading, to see how the way I build forms changes: what motions am I doing, where am I generating my power from, what things am I paying attention to during the building process? Additionally how has the way I’m doing the form changed (especially when doing the older section): How has my timing changed, how am I doing the transitions, has my intent changed?  I started building out some of the sections and already there is a huge difference compared to Kayley-Broadsword-I. When I made that form, it was my first year on the I Ho Chuan team and my first time EVER making my own form.  It took me ages to try to string together sections and I ...