Or can I...?

Between it floating around in the back of my mind for almost a week, reading sifu Brinker's blog post about it today, and sifu Rybek encouraging us to write a blog after tonight's meeting, I think all three created the mental conditions that were just right for me to have a lightbulb moment about the knifehand-long punch-open roundhouse/(dragons whip)-spinning back kick section in da mu hsing II, and I'm very excited about it, I mean, jumping up and down punching the air excited. 

My initial question about this sequence that kind of kickstarted this whole thing was that I was having trouble feeling any flow or power from that spinning back kick at the end of the sequence. When sifu Brinker explained that the energy flows just like it does in the knifehand-punch 1) it blew my mind that the spinning back kick was meant to be connected like that!! and 2) I thought I had an answer to my question and all it would take would be to practice with that intent in mind. 

However as I was practicing it I could not feel the slightest bit of what he was describing. Intellectually I knew how they were meant to connect, but that feeling was very absent in my technique. Until tonight! When I was working on this section tonight I started having a mental conversation with myself: 

"ok so we know that it's supposed to flow the same as the knifehand-punch right? And the flow is really easy to feel in that so what's the problem?"

"The problem is that no matter how much I speed up and try to shorten the time between when the dragons whip finishes and the spinning back kick starts, they feel like two separate moves"

"ok then why does the hand sequence not feel like two separate moves?"

"because the retraction of the first strike facilitates the start of the second strike, that concept of two mittens with a string connecting them, one goes out the other must come back in"

"yea but the problem is I can't do that with my legs, unlike my arms, they're holding my weight so I can't just start to launch the next kick as the first one retracts, it's not physically possible, I'd fall over,"

"or can I?"

*cue shattering of a million mental lightbulbs!!!* 

As I played around with this idea I realized that the physical restraint of needing at least one leg on the ground was what was keeping me from seeing the flow between the kicks. But a kick does not begin in the moment you first lift your foot off the ground, it begins with your intent. I realized that if I thought about starting to throw the spinning back kick as the dragons whip was retracting starting to turn my upper body around in preparation for the kick as my right leg moved to the ground I was finally able to feel that connection of energy between both kicks!!! The whole section still needs lots of work, but at least now I can feel the flow through all 4 moves in this sequence!