New internal martial art, who dis?
I’m kidding, of course. Taiji is my forever love, but there’s a new hotness in town caled Bagua. My teacher has practiced it for decades, and she showed me how to walk the circle with DeerHorn Knives ages ago.
I was having horrific flashbacks while doing meditation, so my teacher suggested I walk the circle instead. Since she knew how much I loved weapons, she gave me an extra pair of practice DeerHorn Knives to add a bit of spice to the walking.
I immediately fell in love with the DeerHorn Knives. Let’s face it. I’m a slut for weapons. They are literally metal as fuck. It’s funny because any time I talked about weapons on Twitter, I would have women clutching their pearls over how ‘violent’ I was. One was very distressed because she did not picture me like that at all. It happened more so when the weapons in question were the DeerHorn Knives. They were pracitice DeerHorn Knives, which meant blunted tips and nothing that could actually cut you. But, still. So much discomfort and disapproval.
One woman said that she was uncomfortable thinking about me using weapons. “I didn’t think you were the violent type,” she said to me. What I didn’t say was, “I’m not. That’s why I practice weapons–to release the anger.” I actually think that I’m a calmer person because I do weapons. It’s my way of getting out the aggression safely.
As a female-shaped person, I’m embracing my warrior side. My Taiji teacher says that she needs to teach men to CTFO and women to not be as delicate. Most of us middleclass female-shaped people do not learn how to fight. Because I was also from an Asian immigrant family, I got twice the amount of ‘nice girls are quiet and meek’ bullshit.
It’s funny that the persistent stereotype of Asian women is that they are meek and submissive. I understand how this stereotype came about, but
I have no idea why it’s still going strong. Asian women have some of the strongest personalities that I have ever seen. Back when I was in different groups, there was a joke among the Asian women that when two Asian women met, it was either hate at first sight or BFF. There was more than a kernel of truth to that statement.
Back to Bagua. I first learned to walk the circle when I was a pacifist. My teacher told me to focus on the opponent in the middle of the circle, and I was uncomfortable with that. Intellectually, I knew that all martial arts were about combat; it’s right there in the name. Martial art, I mean. Yes, it’s the lazy person’s martial art. Yes, it’s about expending the least amount of energy possible. Yes, it’s gentle and beautiful and good for the helath.
It’s still a martial art. It’s for defending yourself if need be. When I first started Taiji, it was because i wanted to be able to defend myself. I appeared hard, but I had nothing to back it up. Now I do. I was just talking to my teacher today about what she would use in a fight–Taiji or Bagua. She said mostly Bagua, but with a healthy dose of Taiji. I feel like I could at least avoid getting seriously damaged with the help of Taiji. I’ve used it in my daily life when I’ve fallen so I haven’t had anything more than a few scrapes and bruises.
Back to walking the circle. I was a protagonist back then, and the thought of hurting someone turned my stomach. I always said that if some were to try to kill me, I would let them. I would have defended a loved one, but not myself. And, yes, the implication that I did not love myself was true. Back then.
When I started walking the circle, something came over me. I honed in on the enemy, and there was nothing else. It was laser-like, and one time, the thought of, “It’s either him or me” flashed into my mind. That shook me beacuse as I said, I was a pacifist. I would have let someone kill me, I thought, rather than harm a head on another human being’s head. In that moment, though, all of that was gone. If he was coming at me, well, then, I was going to get him first.
That completely changed me. I was no longer a pacifist. I was no longer willing to put everyone else above me at all cost. It was the moment when I realized that I mattered. I had spent all my life being beaten down and had it drummed into my head that I should not think too much of myself. Except, because of the family dysfunction, it came across as, “You ain’t shit, Minna. Don’t you dare think you have a right to live.”
This is how messed up I was. I thought that I started each day in debt. To what or twhom, I couldn’t tell you, but to the universe in general, I guess. I was a toxic presence that needed to be wiped out every day. The problem was that I colud never climb completely out of the hole, and I just sink a bit more each day.
In that moment, when I thought that I would kill the other person rather than let him kill me, that was when I first realized that I had a right to be alive. I did not have to earn that right by doing anything.
Why have I decided to study Bagua now? I’m not sure. First of all, I see how much my teacher loves it and I think it’d be good to learn another martial art. I do the DeerHorn Knives every week, anyway,which is part of the martial art. Bagua is nastier than Taiji and not nearly as gentle. It’s about bending and twisting, and it’s much more active than Taiji. Taiji is more defensive (not that you can’t attack with it) whereas Bagua is much more in your face. It’s muscular, which is what I like about it. I love that Taiji is gentle and smooth, that everything works in unison, and that if you break someone’s bones, you do it without fuss or muss.
But, I felt the need to do something more aggressive. That’s Bagua. I’m excited about learning a new martial art that I know very little about. I had a private lesson today, and I told my teacher that it was going to take a while to change my mindset from Taiji to Bagua.
I like it already, though. I can’t wait to see how far I go with this.