way too many commas

I recently realized that I will have to miss quite a few upcoming tai chi classes because I am scheduled to work quite a few nightshifts on upcoming Wednesdays. But rather than lamenting this fact like I did during the last big stretch of nightshifts, I want to keep myself engaged and practicing tai chi more on my own time.  I must confess that I almost never practice tai chi outside of class, so I figured this could be an opportunity for me to build some habits and get used to more self directed practice. Just because there's no class, doesn't mean there's no kung fu, just because there's no class doesn't mean there's no tai chi. I don't want to try to make a drastic change, so just to start out I am making a promise to myself that I will do at a minimum: 15 mins of tai chi on the days that I am not able to attend class. I figured formalizing it in a blog and sharing it with the team would be a great way to reinforce this goal! Current Total Should Be At Pu...

I have (finally) submitted my entry for this years Tiger Challenge. I want to say that I was stalling for time trying to get my partners sorted out for the team events, that I needed a bit more time to confirm all the divisions I was entering, but the real reason is that (somewhat unconsciously) I have been procrastinating as way to protect myself from the board breaks.  My grading year was the first year back since COVID that I really took the tournament seriously. I told myself I don't like sparring , but that I would enter anyway, I told myself my sword form still needed lots of work , but I made myself enter anyway, but for some reason I did not push myself to do the board breaks.  I was pushing myself to do lots that year, no need to overdo it, next year I'll do it for sure, next year rolls around and again I don't enter I'm not grading so I don't even really have to do a board break this year right? I need to dedicate time to my team events, so I won't hav...

During last week's I Ho Chuan class Sifu Rybak said something that was very beautiful and profound about our forms and I wanted to remember it in a blog. The exact wording is long gone now, but the idea is still clear in my mind, she said something along the lines of this our school forms won't fit you, you didn't make them so they don't take into consideration how your body moves or what strengths or weaknesses you might have, but to completely contradict myself, they should fit you perfectly because they utilize the universal truths of martial arts and the foundations of our style. If you are maximizing power, applying your skelton, using your six harmonies (i.e. DOING kung fu!) then it shouldn't matter.  And I love this idea so much. The fact that it sounds so conflicting but makes so much sense! How both ideas can be true: the school forms won't fit us because we can only grow to know them, we are always, on some level, imitating someone's way of doing i...

Intent can be fluid, But [in a form] technique needs to be consistent. This is an idea from Sifu Brinker in our last one-on-one that I want to explore further in a blog. It has made me think about why we insist such specificity when we are teaching forms, and how it is the complete opposite of why I thought we did it before. I used to think we were trying to paint a very clear picture of intent, the more detail we described, the more likely someone would understand, the more effective the technique would become, clarifying the intent to such a degree that there is no doubt in how the body should move, no question about what your intent is in that moment. But now I'm starting to understand that it's the exact opposite, we are teaching things with specificity because the more pure the intent is, the greater the number of possibilities/opportunities can be created from that motion. Doing something "correctly" does not only mean that you are doing a technique with a high ...