Let’s talk more about the Fan Form. I worked on polishing it today, and I’ve already noticed little tweaks here and there that I had to make–from learning it this week.. Part of it is my now terrible memory and part of it is just human nature. Also, no one is perfect. While watching the video I’m following, I noticed a mistake or two on the part of the teacher. No shade because again, no one is perfect, but it says something about how much I’ve grown myself. Ten years ago, I would not have noticed the mistakes because I was still relatively new myself, especially to weapons.
It’s the same when I watch my teacher’s school’s demo. Her teacher is a master so I don’t see his mistakes very often (or at all). However, when one of his students does a form, I can see the little errors they make. Again, this is not shade. This is not me trying to put myself above them because I would make the same amount of mistakes they did if I presented any of the forms I knew. It just shows how much I’ve grown since I first started studying Taiji. Here is my post from day before yesterday about many things relating to martial arts.
I have included a different Fan Form below. It’s more aggressive than the one I know, and it has kicks and leaps in it. It’s breathtaking, and I would not mind learning it at some point. There are so many fan forms, and I could see spending your whole life studying just those. In searching for a good fan form video, I came across several. And I want to learn every one. Every single one!
I have to hold myself back, though, beacuse as my teacher said to me once, it’s better to learn a few forms well than to learn several dozen badly. She put it more diplomatically than that, but it’s what she meant. And I get it. I tend to get obsessed with things that interest me to the exclusion of everything else. It’s the neurospiciness of my brain, and I have to decide when to feed it and when to starve it.
Ed. note: For whatever reason, the rest of this post got lost to the ethers. I probably thought I saved it and didn’t. I’m just going to continue this post and take it in whatever direction I want to go.
I am still brushing up on my Fan Form. I have completed my re-teaching of myself, but there are several places where I can tweak and/or tidy up. I can’t watch the videos, though, right now because Microsoft is fucked up in some way. So I just did it from memory, which was not great. My memory, I mean. There is a bit at the end that I would like to review, but I can puzzle it out and do my best until Microsoft fixes their shit.
I have included in this post above a Fan Form that is very much a performance. My teacher likes to joke about how there are two postures that people always use to show they know Taiji, but for different purposes. One is Wave Hands Like Clouds (abbreviated as Cloud Hands), and if a movie wants to show people doing Taiji (not masters, but just people who study/practice Taiji), this is the position they will show. My teacher said it’s because anyone can do that movement decently with minimal coaching.
Funnily enough, it was one of my least-favorite postures for a very long time. Probably because it was so easy. For whatever reason, my brain rebelled against it for a very long time. I could do it adequately, but my heart wasn’t in it. My teacher’s teacher recently tweaked it, and I liked his improvements. It made the posture much smoother and it felt better to do.
The other is Squatting Single Whip (Snake Creeps Down), and this is the one that teachers do in an exaggerated stance because it looked impressive. There is a famous sculpture in Taiwan by Ju Ming called Single Whip (I’ve posed in front of it when we visited the Ju Ming Museum), and this is definitely a squatting version of it.
It’s fun to see the different versions of Taiji, but I’m biased. All the vigorous exertions just don’t look right to me. Yes, the video I posted is very dazzling–and the man has skills. I’m not doubting that at all. I’m just saying that there’s a lot of extra flair in there that doesn’t really service the form. This is what my teacher means by too much pomp and not enough circumstance. Heh. She would not phrase it that way, but it tickled me.
There is nothing wrong with being showy, especially when you’re doing an actual show. And, watching Yan Xi (the man in the video above), it’s clear that he’s got mad skills, so why not show them off?
For daily practice, though, this is a bit excessive. My teacher has said time and time again that the goal is to put out the least amount of effort for the biggest results. There is a reason Taiji is called the lazy person’s marital art, and it’s for that reason that I chose it in the first place. I am lazy as fuck, and the ideals she told me about really resonated with me.
Yes, I wanted exercise that was good for me, but I did not necessarily want to feel it. Or rather, I did not want to ache for hours afterwards. I know that many Americans feel like this is the best way to exercise (feel the burn, no pain; no gain, etc.). I had a classmate who would start running every spring and instead of easing into it, he went full bore. Then, he would inevitably tear something in his foot/leg, and he would be out for the relst of the year.
I know we are programed to believe that if it doesn’t hurt, it’s not working. This is simply not true, but I am tired of talking about it. People are going to believe what they want to believe, and I have to just accept that.
That’s all for today. More tomorrow.