6 Harmonies V4.7

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, with each of the others decreasing in influence the further they got from my center. Very recently I’ve started thinking about how the distance in the connection between each of the Harmonies changes how they can interact with each other (because shoulders and hips share one degree of separation they influence each other more, because wrists and ankles share 6 degrees of separation their influence is harder to understand/trace/feel). Now I have this new piece of the picture to consider and I can start to listen for it in my training! I was trying to tie this idea into my tai chi this week, feeling not just how the pieces work together, but how the movements can come from each piece, how the motion of my shoulders is echoed in my knees. How sometimes all it takes is the right twist of my hips and if my intent is pure and my body is connected and relaxed, all the rest can fall into place. 

This is all just a start and I want to work on exploring this idea more, and listening for it throughout my training. 

	Current Total
Push-ups	4481
Sit-Ups	3541
AOK	114
Km	333
Blogs	6
Sparring	12
Hand Form	76
Weapon Form	65
Repair Relationship	0