Let’s talk more about weapons. Not necessarily which one I’m choosing for the demo because we all know it’s the Double Fan Form. It was always going to be the Double Fan Form. I mean, I did seriously conside the other weapon forms, and the Double Saber Form came in a close second. I love being a human blender with the double sabers. It’s so much fun! Here was the last post in which I–wait. I never made an official decision, did I? Well, this is the last post in which I mused a lot about it. In fact, I had made my decision for the most part before I even started musing about it, and then I was very tired, so I assumed I had made the actual decision by the end of the post.
So, just in case I haven’t been clear–I’m going to do the Double Fan Form. Which means I have to clean it up. In every form, there are a few postures that I’m not sure of and just fudge. Or I style it out. Or I just do something that’s suitable, but may not be the actual postures. In other words, I get stloppy. And then I have to go back and clean up the mess. Well, not mess, but the mistakes.
One of my flaws is that I get lazy, and not in the good way. What I mean is that I work so hard to learn a form, I’m all used up by the end. It’s a Herculean effort for me to just teach myself the form, my brain complains when I try do the corrections.
I don’t want to fall into the trap of thinking that I have so much time to fix it beacuse it’s almost a year away–the demo I mean. I have two modes–go hard and don’t go at all. When I am in the latter mode, it’s really hard to push me into the former. It’s best for me to stay in the former mode so I won’t get stuck in the latter.
Don’t worry. I’m not talking about being a workaholic or pushing myself to burnout. That’s not my style at all. What I mean is that once I get into the flow, it’s easy for me to stay there. It’s just getting there in the first place that is so fucking hard.
I’m going to include a video of a really cool Fan Form just for the fun of it. It’s not one I do, but it’s really exciting to watch. And I’ve posted it before because it’s just that cool.
Back to the weapon forms. I am currently working on one new one. It’s the Bagua Knives Form because without a doubt, my favorite weapon is the Deer Horn Knives. They feel so right in my hands, that I want to hold them all the time. I was doing the Walking the Circle meditation with them to avoid Taiji meditation, and they became my favorite weapon.
They remained my favorite weapon, and I wanted to learn the Deer Horn Knives Form. Except, I could not find one. I knew my teacher’s teacher did the form, but I could not find one on his site. I finally did, so that’s the one I’m teaching myself.
This form is really centering for me. At the same time, there is a lot of power behind it. While Taiji has power, the main point of it is not the power. Whereas with Bagua, I am here to cut a bitch. If someone gets in my way, well, then, I’ll just have to move them out of my way. My teacher has told me that Bagua is considered the martial art of crazy and/or dangerous people whereas Taiji is the lazy person’s martial art.
Considering that I’m both those things (“lazy” and “crazy”–hey, that rhymes), it’s the perfect blend of martial arts for me.
I asked my teacher how she handled keeping the two separate. She said it was difficult at first and that it took a lot of practice. It felt so alien when I first started learning Bagua. In fact, she had me just walking the circle to get used to it. Also, resting in the position of having my weight sixty percent back helped. Now, it’s quite natural. However, if I let my mind wander, then I fuck it up.
There are plenty of different kind of steps in Bagua (chicken step and lion step are two). I haven’t gotten to that because I have a bunch of other stuff to work on, such as the mud step and the changing palms step.
This is one of my issues with martial arts and weapons–I want to learn them all. Every single one! I saw a demo of the Guandao Form, and it really stuck with me. It’s a polearm, and I loved it. I looked for one online, and I could not find a video of the form anywhere. I asked my teacher about it, and she said that her teacher’s version was not Taiji. I think it might be Xingyiquan. I’m not a hundred percent certain. I immediately fell in love with the form, but I put it to the side when I could not find a video of it. I would still love to teach it to myself, so I’ll have to go digging again.
Another weapon I really like is the hook sword. But, I want to do the Double Hook Sword Form right away rather than the single. I don’t know why I’m so enamored with double weapons at the moment, but it’s all I want to do.
The Bagua Knives Form is not called double, but it is double because I have one in each hand. This one also has each hand doing a different thing, but it doesn’t seem as wild (yet) as the Double Fan Form. I couldn’t tell you why that is exactly, but it just seems to flow more easily. I think in part because while so far, it is similar to the Solo Form–no, that’s not it, really.
Nope. Sorry, I can’t really tell you why it’s not as taxing as the Double Fan Form was; it just isn’t.