Expansions, Contractions, and Plastic Children's Toys

"Does a strike always have to have the intent of an expansion?"

This was one of the questions I asked in my one-on-one at the beginning of this week, and it came about because I was practicing Lao Gar with the intent of trying to feel the contractions and expansions in each move. Right away during that first panther fist I felt like my energy was squeezing/shrinking/tightening. The passive eye-for-detail warning lights started going off in my brain so I stopped to try to think some things through.

a) Until this moment I had always assumed a strike should align with an expansion, pushing your energy and force into something else, but maybe some techniques work better if they are done as a contraction? If so, this could be an exciting new way to think about my intent during a strike?

b) I was doing it wrong and it shouldn't feel like a contraction at all, and my internal intent would need to be adjusted. 

Sifu Brinker explained to me that an expansion should be defined by the connection of your top and bottom halves and I thought I understood this concept in our meeting but it wasn't until later when I was actually working on it that I started to really feel what he was talking about. Not only did this description help me fix how I was thinking about the panther fist technique, but it also highlighted how my original understanding of contraction and expansion was slightly different than this one. 

Before, I was thinking about my energy/intent/limbs expanding out from my center in all directions like one of those weird plastic sphere toys. Contractions were the same, collapsing and pulling in to the center. That toy is a great analogy for what I never realized I was visualizing before because the ratio of each part remains constant no matter the size of the circle, it is constant regardless of if the circle is expanding out or contracting in. This made me realize before I was thinking about my expansions/contractions as linear vectors moving out/in from/to my center in all directions. Now I can feel that they are more specified to a certain direction. That the harmony between my top and bottom half create that snap, that equal and opposite pushing/wrenching between what is striking and what is connected to the ground along a specific axis in space; instead of expanding out in all directions.

I definitely need some vague hand gestures and weird noises to fully explain myself, but hopefully this made some semblance of sense.  




Comments

  1. Nigel BauerMarch 30, 2023 at 3:57 PM

    It’s tensegrity!

    ReplyDelete
  2. KhonaMarch 30, 2023 at 6:11 PM

    My kids’ preschool teacher taught me that it’s called a Hoberman sphere. Cool name, and cool concept.

    ReplyDelete

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