Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: taiji

More on being mindful and meditation

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I want to talk more about mindfulness, meditation, and Taiji. I started a post aabout it yesterday, but as is my wont, I meandered all over the place. And probably fell asleep while writing it. My sleep is just terrible lately, for reasons that aren’t part of this post. So, yeah. Mindfulness? Miss me with that noise.

Look.

Look!

I’m not against mindfulness. In general, I’m pro-doing what makes you feel better as long as it’s not harmful to you in the long run or to other people. And, by not harmful to others, I mean truly harmful. Not, “you hurt me by setting entirely reasonable boundaries” harmful, but actually harmful.

I’m a big believer in acknowledging that most of us are just getting by as best we can. Life is hard, yo. And that’s for almost everyone.

Side note: I had a deep and abiding hatred for Christianity for most of my twenties. I had the  misfortune of being raised in a restrictive, sexist, conservative, Evangelical Christian church. I reacted very poorly to God with a capital G after that.

It took me ten years to get over my hatred. Then, I spent my late-thirties being studiously neutral to Christianity (while secretly judging it). It’s only in my forties and fifties that I can truly say that I’m fine with Christianity*.

Side note to the side note: It’s like Christmas and my birthday. I hated both when I was younger.Really hated them both. Then I reached a point when I said I didn’t hate them any longer, but still felt negatively about them. It took a long time (and a lot of Taiji) before I actually felt neutral about them. Do I feel positively about them? No. But, I’ll take it as a win that I no longer hate both.

Also, I have a new birthday. It’s the day I died and came back to life. It means much more to me than my actual birthday because, well, it just does.

Side note to the side note to the side note: When I was in my twenties, my mom would call me every year on my birthday. Foolishly, I would try to brush it off because I absolutely hated my birthday back then. My mother would get teary and go on and on about how important the day had been to her. That and the birth of my brother were the two most important events of her life. She went on about it for so long, I started comforting her.

That’s my role in life, you see. I’ve called myself her emotional support human, and I am used to it now. Back then, though, it really chafed that she dumped all this on me ON MY BIRTHDAY. It had to be about her, even on a day that was supposedly supposed to be about me. One reason I hated my birthday, by the way.

Wow. I really went in circles in this post, didn’t I?


Continue Reading

My goals for 2026, part three

Posted on by • 0 Comments

Here we are in post three about what I want to do with my life in 2026.I have several goals, but there are three that I consider my priority. In yesterday’s post, I mostly wrote about Taiji and Bagua forms, of which there are several I want to teach myself. The goal for the year is to teach myself the Bagua Knives Form (with the deer horn knives), but in order to do that, I first have to teach myself the left side of the Swimming Dragon Form. Well, I don’t have to, but my teacher highly recommended it.

She told me there really wasn’t a Swimming Dragon Form with the deer horn knives, which made me sad. That’s really my ultimate goal in Bagua, and she said that basically, I would have to cerate my own. I’m up for it, but just not yet. Frist step is to teach myself the left side of the Swimming Dragon Form. I’m halfway done with that, and I should be able to finish it in a month or so. Or two. I want to be generous to myself so let’s say two.

My third goal is perhaps the hardest one of all. Well, that’s not true, but it’ll be difficult for different reasons.

3. I will find a queer/genderqueer Asian group, probably online.

I feel a lack of Asian people in my life. Asian American, to be more specific. And queer people. And genderqueer people. Ideally, I would like it to be all at the same time because it’s combining race, gender, and sexuality is a tricky triple combo. As with everything else in my life, I have to pare down what I’m looking for. If I was going to be unrealistic, I would add areligious to the mix, along with body positive, into martial arts, and black cats. In other words, people a lot like me. Oh! And autism and/or ADHD. Again, asking for all of that is a tall order, so I’m trimming it to gender, race, and sexual identity.

This will be hard because of my specific wants. It’s not just queer–it’s bisexual/polysexual/whatever you want to call it. In other words, not gay. I know that everyone thinks queer means gay, but it doesn’t. Bi erasure is real (or whatever you want to call it these days–bi, I mean. I’m not sold on it and never have been, but I can’t think of anything I like better. So for now, bi means people like me and people not like me. Said with a grumpy sigh), and it’s so fucking tired.

It’s the same with gender identity. I don’t mean nonbinary–I mean agender. They are different things, or at least they are to me. I don’t fluctuate in my gender like some people do. This is something that I have such a hard time explaining because I can’t make it make total sense in my own bran.


Continue Reading

More musing about martial arts in 2026

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I’m back to talk more about my martial arts in the next year. Before I get to that, though, my god. My sleep is so off the rails. Like, this is the worst it’s been in quite some time. Ugh. I’m trying very hard to get it back on track, but for whatever reason, it’s just not working.

Back to martial arts.

By the way, I still think immediately ‘taiji’ and then add ‘bagua’ afterwards. I’m fine with that as I’ve been studying Taiji for fifteen years and Bagua less than one. Or right around one. This is the post from yesterday in which I talk about the Double Fan Form and how close I am to f inishing it. Soooooo close. In fact, I could have finished it by now, but I’ve been pacing myself. I don’t want to rush at the end just to say I have it finished.

I’mma be real with you. I am very proud of myself for sticking with it. I have never had this much trouble with a form before,, and I had to really push myself some days to get it done. I’m weird in that I either quit right away when I can’t do something or I push myself past the point where it’s smart or reasonable.

To be fair, I have proven I can do it this time. Well, I have one posture left to go, but I don’t think I’m speaking out of pocket by declaring it finis (at some point soon).

What’s next? I can’t help but think about it because I’m that close. I know I’ve said that I want to focus on refining the forms I alreadyy know, but I can’t deny that mumur in the back of my head saying, “But what about a new form?”

“Oh, you should just CTFO and refine the forms you already–”

“Ok, but what about a new form, though?”

Now, I’d like to tell you that I will be mature and work on refining the forms I already know. That I’ll be thoughtful and reflective next year so my current forms will be better. I do think I’ll do some of that, but I also know myself. I am going to teach myself another form. Or I’m going to create a form.

Might as well shoot for the top, then. Swimming Dragon Form (hands only) on the left side. Plus, my teacher’s teacher’s Bagua Form with Deer Horn Knives. Or maybe I’ll create a Swimming Dragon Form with the Deer Horn Knives. It’s going to be something with the Deer Horn Knives. I can tell you that much. They are my favorite weapon, and I am excited to do an actual form with them. It’s the whole reason I started learning Bagua.


Continue Reading

Taiji (and Bagua) and me in 2026

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I am so close. SO CLOSE. One more posture, and I’m done with the Double Fan Form. Well, I mean, I’ll have to refine it and make it all spiffy, but I will have taught all 48 postures to myself. 48! I still can’t believe I made it to the end. Well, I can because that’s the natural result of teaching myself a posture every so often, but, my god, it’s taken so fucking long. I honestly had my doubts that I would get here because I thought about giving up back in the early days.

Let me be real. I was never going to give up, but there were days when I really wished I could let myself do so. I had no reason for teaching myself this form other than I wanted to do it. There were times when I really did not want to do it. But I kept doing it because I’m fucking stubborn. And because it’s a beautiful form. When I can get in the flow, I love it. Here is my post from yesterday.

The way I got through it was by not thinking how much I had left to teach myself. If  I had thought about it when I was in the low teens, I would have been depressed as fuck. Now that I’m one posture away from finishing it, though, I’m just in awe.

It’s a lovely form, and it seems deceptively easy. At least it did to me before I started teaching myself the form. I have included one of the three videos I used to teach the form to myself, and it was so helpful. It showed the form from the front and back at the same time, and it’s very slow so that I can catch everything about each movement. I really apppreciate that it’s from both back and front at the same time. I mostly used the back view because it’s the way I’m situated so it helps me visualize the way to do the movements.

That’s the one thing I struggle with when watching most videos. The vast majority only show them facing forward, which means I have to mentally reverse the image when I’m trying to teach the postures to myself. I mean, when you’re learning in class, you’re behind the teacher, right? That’s the way it should be in videos as well. I know why it’s not that way, but I’m just appreciative that in the video below, they show both viewpoints.

I started this form back in April–on my real birthday*, as a matter of fact. I thought it would take me three months, and here we are, eight months later. Subtracting one month because of my three-shot day, that still leaves me with seven months of teaching this form to myself.


Continue Reading

More musing on martial arts in 2026

Posted on by • 0 Comments

This has been a very shitty year for many reasons. Some are related to the politics of this country, but some of it is personal. I’m not going to delve too deeply into either, but I just wanted to state that at the outset. I don’t have much love for my country–

Side note (And, yes, I’m putting a side note in this early): I don’t understand patriotism. It is so beyond me. Why should I feel more passionate about the United States than, say, Burundi, just because I was born here? I have never really understood team mentality, even when I watched sports and rooted for Minnesota teams.

I should say that I get it on an intellectual level, sort of . “People like me, good. People not like me, bad.” I mean, I have people I am ride-or-die for, but it’s not based on a country or a nationality, a race, a gender, or anything else like that. I think this is part of the reason I don’t care about gender–it’s just another identifier that I don’t have any connection with.

I remember when the Vikings were overwhemingly supposed to make it to the Super Bowl, but flamed out in the first round of the playoffs. This was when I was following sports. I was crushed–for about a day. Then I shrugged it off and moved on with my life. The following pre-season, a local TV station interviewed a fan who was dressed in Vikings garb. He was still devastated by the loss and talked as if it had happened the day before. He clearly hadn’t moved on, and I just wanted to shake him and tell him to get a life.

I cannot fathom identifying with something that deeply that has nothing to do with you personally. Passionate spports fans in general are an anathema to me. Talking about how “we” did, as if the fan was an actual part of the team.

I have never felt that way about any group. Not national, not ethnic, not a team, or anything else. Not my family, either. I thought something was broken in me (as I thought about so many other things) that I could not get this. However, it never bothered me. I never  really felt it was a bad thing that I didn’t care about any one group like that.

I’ve listened to sports fan who insist if you give up on your team at any point, then you are the worst of the worst. Moreover, you are not allowed to go back, apparently, if they ever win. I have heard grown men say this with a straight face. “You have to know the bad times to appreciate the good!” Like, no, you reallly don’t. That’s a very Christian way of looking at things, and I have never vibed with it, even back when I was ostensibly a Christian.


Continue Reading

Martial arts and me in 2026, part two

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I’m back to talk more about martial arts and my goals therein for 2026. Here is yesterday’s post in which I mused about what martial arts mean to me and more. I must say, it was easier when I just practiced Taiji beacuse I could say Taiji and leave it at that. Now,  I can and have said Taiji and Bagua, but that’s a mouthful.

In addition, not many people know what Bagua is. I didn’t until several years after I started studying Taiji. I mean, I knew my teacher practiced it, and she taught me how to walk the circle. I had seen her demonstrate the Swimming Dragon Form at her school’s demo before.. I didn’t know much more than that until recently. For whatever reason, at the last demo (which I watched online), I was very much into the Bagua. Or maybe it was the year before? Or I just thought more about it? It had to be earlier than this year’s demo. Maybe last year’s demo.

Anyway, I asked my teacher to teach me the Swimming Dragon Form, which she did. She taught me the first two-thirds, and then soon thereafter, we hit a movement that is probably the most intricate in the sequence. It’s a throw and a kick at the same time, and I think she was a bit unsure about it because she kept putting it off. Finally, I videotaped her doing the form and then taught the rest of it to myself.

It’s been interesting messing around with it. I was practicing mud steps (walking as if you’re in mud, never lifting my feet)on the left side for the first seven or so steps. Now, I’m teaching myself  the Swimming Dragon Form on the left side for real, and it’s making me question myself on the right side as well. It’s funny, really. I have done the Swimming Dragon Form enough times (I practice it every day) that it’s in my bones. And yet, now that I’m teaching myself the leftt side, it messes with my mind once in a while on the right side.

My teacher jokes about this. In her home school, her teacher mostly practices the left side of the Solo Form in class. In our classe, we practice the right side. Once in a while, that messes her up in our class, which I can understand. Oh, and she has problems with distinguishing her right from left. I don’t, but I did notice that when I was practicing the first half-dozen postures of the Swimming Dragon Form on the left side every day, it was more difficult for me to do it on the right  side.


Continue Reading

My martial arts in 2026

Posted on by • 0 Comments

Let’s talk about martial arts. Why? Because they are very important parts of my life and because I want to. I think those are good enough reasons. I’ve decided that I’m going to do both the idealistic version and the realistic version in one post. Maybe intertwined. ‘Coz that’s how I roll.

First, though, I have to say that this last year has been hard. Really hard. Both for personal reasons and political reasons, and they kind of bounce of feach other. I’m not the most optimistic person in the first place, and this year has made it even worse. In addition, K is having a hard time, too, which only emphasizes and underscores the roughness.

I don’t expect 2026 to be better in that vein; indeed, I’m just bracing myself to see how much worse it gets. The last time I talked to K, I mentioned again that when I went to get my license renewed after my birthday in 2024, there was the option of nonbinary for gender on the form for the first time.

I was amazed and delighted, but I was also hesitant. With the specter of the election coming and the very real chance that things would change for the drastically worse if Biden was not reelected, well, I thought long and hard about changing my gender to nonbinary. For one, it’s not how I identifys–though it’s the closest of the three that were available. For two, I really did not want the smoke I might get if I was pulled over with nonbinary on my driver’s license. Look. I’m already a visible minority (Asian), so why would I want to add another minority (nonbinary) to it? Especially when it’s not the label I have chosen as my own, and doubly especially when I want to think less about gender–not more.

I reluctantly chose female, but I did not feel good about it. I could not help but note to myself that four years earlie, had it been a choice, I would have probably chosen nonbinary. Or if I were twenty years old. I’m not going to get into the latter right now, but just trust me that it makes sense. I don’t like the choice I made, but I also don’t regret that I chose female.

Back to martial arts, specifically Taiji and Bagua. I know about ten forms, most of them on both the left and right sides. I want to refine them. All of them. In 2026. Yes, that’s idealistic, but hey, why not reach for the stars? I also want to go back to the beginning and really polish my Solo (Long) Form. Going back even further than that, there are a few basics that I need to work on–like keeping my shoulders down.


Continue Reading

Totally realistic goals for 2026, part two

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I am going to talk about my realistic goals for 2026 once again. Here is my post from yesterday in which I blathered on and on about writing, identity, and the intersectionality thereof. Today, I want to talk about Taiji and Bagua. Why? Because why not? More seriously, because they are very important to me, and I can talk happily about them for hours on end. I try not to because no one other than my teacher would really want to hear about it.

I will mention the weapon form I’m working on because that’s understandable. I think? When appropriate, I will send one of the videos I’ve been using to teach myself so the person can see what I’m acutally doing. The response? “That looks really hard!” Which is oddly gratiying to hear. And validating. I still have three postures left to teach myself because I’ve been doing a bit of refinement. I’m feeling good about it, and I’m hoping to finish it before the end of the year. I just decided that. You would think that teaching myself three postures in a month would be a snap, but this weapon form has given me so much trouble, we shall have to wait and see.

I look back at how confident I was before I started teaching myself the form that I would be able to do so in three months. That’s the longest it’s taken me to teach myself any form, so why not? This form didn’t look that much more difficult than the others. My hubris was my downfall. Even if we take out the month I in which I was recuperating from my three shot delight, it’s still taken me seven months thus far to learn the Double Fan Form.

The thing I did not take into account was that the two fans do different things at the same time. In the other double weapon form I know (Double Saber Form), the weapons do the same thing alternately or one does a movement while the other doesn’t. I was not ready. I will admit it. I was so confident I could teach it to myself with ease. Oh, how the fates and the double fans have laughed at me. Heartily, I will add.

But! I am getting there. Slowly and painfully. I think I will feel great once I’m done. (Even though I still have much refinements to do on it.) I’m fully prepared to have to spend another month on the refinements, but I’ll be happy once I teach the final posture to myself.


Continue Reading

Double Fan Form: nearing the end, part five

Posted on by • 0 Comments

Despite what the title is of this post, I’m actually going to finish the list that I started yesterday of my weapons, easiest to hardest to learn. If I have time and the brain bandwidth, I’ll get back to the Double Fan Form. If I don’t, though, then I won’t and will get back to it in another post.

For some reason, I thought I was making a list of the weapons, my favorite to least favorite. Nope. That wasn’t what I was doing, so let’s get back to easiest to learn to hardest to learn.

Before I get to the rest of the list, though, let me quickly rattle off the weapons I’m including. You know what? Let’s throw in the Solo Form as well. No. If I do that, then I have to rejigger my list. The Solo (Long) Form was easy for me to learn for the most part. That’s good; I don’t know if I would have stuck it out otherwise.

Why? Because my first experience with Taiji was a disaster. The teacher was terrible for so many reasons, and I was skittish about trying another studio. When I finally mustered up enough energy to research other studios, I had a list of things that I needed from the studio. One, a female teacher. This was nonnegotiable. Two, no shilling of in-studio products like belts and gis and shoes. Three, related to the last one, no belts at all. That’s not really a Taiji thing, anyway, but I was amazed at how many Taiji studios wanted to mimic more traditional karate studios.

I remember at our last studio, there was a group who used the space after us on occasion. I’m not sure what their group was, but they all wore white. I got the sense that it was some kind of New Age hippie thing. I also got the sense that they looked askance at us. See, we wore mostly black, and we were much earthier. I have visible tattoos for one thing. They were very much peace and love. We were more, ah, not hate and strife, but not what they were.

Plus, they would talk in their normal voices while we were trying to finish up our class. That was as annoying as fuck, to be honest.

It took me some time to find my teacher. She had just started her school, and I was her first official student. We gabbed more than we practiced, and we have the tendency to still do the same. I had a lesson with her yesterday and before it, we both said we needed to hold ourselves accountable.

We did it, too. We talked for five or ten minutes, then got down to business. It’s not that we can’t stick to what we’re meant to do; it’s that we’re both too willing to derail each other (and ourselves).


Continue Reading

Double Fan Form: nearing the end, part four

Posted on by • 0 Comments

Double Fan Form. It’s so fucking hard. The whole post could just be that, but I’m going to unpack it even further. I was talking about my family history for most of the post because that’s how I roll. I am a strong writer, but I tend to meander all over the place. Why use one word when ten will do? Writing is esy for me; editing is hard. I do edit as I go, which I shouldn’t do.  I talked with my Taiji teacher about that today because I have to actively resist doing th same with my forms.

My teacher has told me several times that I should learn a form first and then do the refinements. Obviously, that means actually learning the steps. I tend to fudge them sometimes, so I will occasionally go back and reteach them to myself. That’s what I did when I realized I didn’t know chunks of the Fan Form.

By the way, my memory is shit now. I thought I had taught myself the Fan Form before my medical crisis (which was in September of 2021). When I was looking through my emails to find something else, I stumbled across emails to my teacher from February of 2022 in which I said that I was going to teach myself the Fan form. That was five months after my medical crisis, which is amazing in and of itself.

Earlier this year or late last year, I was teaching myself the left side of the fan. It was going pretty well when I reached a spot that I had no idea what came next. I thought back to the right side of the form, and I could not make that pull. I went back to the video (which I had to dig around to find because my teacher sent it to me, an I did not put it any place reasonable), and then I realized I had messed up several postures in the form. Not only that, I had completely omitted several more later in the form (very much near the end).

I blame my medical crisis. I did not have much long-term ramifications from it, but one thing that was affected was my memory. Now, given what I went through, this was to be expected. Even though I had a great memory before my medical crisis, I did not take it too hard when my memory suddenly became like Swiss cheese. I will say that it’s come back to about 75%, which I’m fine with.

It’s weird, though. As I get older, I start wondering if the small ailments I’m feeling are because of my medical crisis or because of my age. When I have a memory lapse, is it because of my brain getting hit so (metaphorically) hard? Or is it just because I’m getting older? Or is it both?


Continue Reading