Wellness | A Banana Peeled

Talaknig more about weapons because I can, part six

Posted on March 12, 2026 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

Am I back to talk more about my weapon forms? Hell, yes I am! Or Taiji and Bagua in general. Here’s my post from yesterday. I’m stoked to be doing a weapon form for my teacher’s demo (don’t worry. I’ll be terrified later on. I jsut have nearly a year to work on it, so the negative feelings won’t settle in until, hopefully, months down the road). Will I be terrified before doing it? Yes.

I used to do dance when I was a kid and acting/performance whwen I was in my twenties. I got nervous/stage fright/sick to my stomach every time. I’ve forgotten lines while on stage (what actor hasn’t?), and I have survived it. The one thing that I know I need to do before the demo is do the form facing different walls and in different places. It’s too easy to rely on where I am facing in the room I always practice in. I know from switching rooms in the past that it confuses me.

Ideally, I would be able to practice in the actual room where I’ll be demoing before the day of the actual demo, but this probably won’t be possible. so the best alternative is to practice in different rooms facing different ways.

The other thing that I need to do is clean it up. I’ve already tightened it up some, but I need to go back through the form and make sure I have all the postures right. I would not be surprised if I was off on half-a-dozen of the postures. I also won’t be surprised if I’ve forgotten one or two postures. I know my brain isn’t working quite as well as I did before my medical crisis. My memory used to be stellar; now it’s at best adequate. It’s partly getting older, yes, but it’s also the stroke.

It’s funny. I rarely think about the stroke, even though in most cases, it would be a really serious thing. I am still incredibly grateful that I was able to recover from it with nothing more than my memory going bad, some problems doing math in my brain, and occasionally forgetting a word. I will take that over what a stroke usually did to you.

I rarely talk even think about the fact that I had a stroke, but I have. I’m not saying that as an excuse; it’s just facts. I had a stroke during my medical crisis, and I think that sometimes, I do need to pay more attention to it than I do. Not that I have to think about it all the time, but just to take into account that it did happen to me.

I think part of the problem is that the medical crisis I had, which by all accounts, should have knocked me down for the count, was something I walked away from less than a week after I woke up from a week-long coma. I still can’t believe it happened, even though it’s been four-and-a-half years.

Talking more about weapon forms, part five

Posted on March 11, 2026 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

Yes, I’m going to talk more about weapon forms because they have changed my life. Before them, I liked Taiji and appreciated the positive benefits, but I have to admit that I struggled. I liked it enough to keep doing it, but I had to admit that it felt more like a duty than a joy at times. I struggled with the Solo Form from the start, I will admit. Part of it was because I had a horrible teacher before my current one who really messed me up when it came to Taiji. I don’t want to talk about it, but suffice to say that it scarred me so much, I did not try to find a new teacher for nearly ten years after. Well, I think it was more like seven or eight, but still.

When I found my current teacher, the thing that really made me trust her was that she would honestly tell me if she didn’t know something. I had so many questions to ask her, and she was very patient with me. If she knew the answer, she would tell me. If she did not, she would tell me that she would either ask her teacher or look it up. And she always did. That’s the important part. She always came back with an answer, even if it was just to tell me that she didn’t know or couldn’t find the answer.

I fought myself so much in the first few years of learning Taiji. My teacher introduced the Sword Form to me in my second or third year of practice, which helped. However, I still resisted practicing the Solo Form or anything related to it.

If i were to be honest, I still skimp on the hands-only Taiji. I hate to admit it, but it’s just not as interesting to me as the weapons. I do the warmups/stretches every day and one section of the Long Form, but then I spend more time with my beloved weapons. Oh, I do some other hands-only Taiji/Bagua, but it’s still not as much as I do the weapons.

I have talked about it with my teacher beacuse she’s the opposite. She likes the hands-only Taiji much more than she does weapons. I didn’t know it for a long time because she hid it well. She was more than willing to talk about weapons at length because I was so excited about them. It wasn’t until she was teaching me the Saber Form for the second time that I had the realization. And it wasn’t that she actually said it. It was just the difference in how she talked about doing the hands-only stuff and the weapons. In addition, when we talked about the first time she taught me the Saber Form, she mentioned that she had stopped at the end of the fourth line because she hadn’t been confident about the complicated steps that ended that line.

She had made a couple other comments about weapons that made me realize they were not her jam. It wasn’t something I really thought of, though, until we got to the Double Saber Form. I had seen one of her classmates do the form at the demo in February, 2020. That was right before the pandemic closed everything down.

Weapon forms? Weapon forms it is (part four)

Posted on March 10, 2026 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

We’re back to talk more about weapon forms. I need to get deep into my feelings about how learning the Double Fan Form changed me. Here is my post from yesterday talking about some of my issues learning Bagua–and some of my flaws in learning martial arts. I mentioned that I was lazy in a not-good way, and while I try not to get hung up on it, it does bother me sometimes.

Back when I first started learning Taiji, I went to one class a week. I could not make myself practice at home for the life of me. I tried and tried, but I just could not do it. In order to make up for it, I started to go to another class a week, and then another (so in total, three). I still could not make myself practice at home.

I don’t know why my brain just refused to do it. Any time I tried, it would scream at me not to do it. I could not force my body to practice. At all. So I tricked it. I started by doing five minutes of Taiji stretches a day. No actual Taiji, mind. Just five minutes of stretching. For whatever reason, my brain was fine with that. It wasn’t doing actual Taiji, see. It was just stretching.

That got by the block in my head, and then I was able to slowly build up a Taiji practice. In addition to the warmups, I did the Solo Form and walked the circle with my deer horn knives. Then, when I learned the Sword Form, my practice really started taking off. I love me my weapons, and being able to do them on the daily was my happy place.

For a while, it was just the Sword Form, left side and right side. Then, a few years later, I added the Saber Form (with much grief), right side and left side. Then, Cane Form, right and left. Hm. I might have learned that before the Saber–no, it was Saber Form then Cane Form. Then, a few staff/spear drills. Then, it was the Double Saber Form just as the pandemic hit. My teacher taught me the first part of it on Zoom (I think? I’m not sure I’m remembering it correctly), but then we reached a part that she wasn’t sure of. She didn’t say that to me, but we just did not move past a certain point.

I was getting frustrated so I asked if it was OK if taught the rest to myself. Her teacher had a video of his Double Saber Form (she had sent it to me earlier), so I could do it from that. It wasn’t ideal, but it was doable. She gave me her blessing (I wouldn’t have done it otherwise), and I went about teaching myself the rest of the form. It wasn’t too bad, though I need to do some clean up on it.

Let’s talk more about weapons, part three

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

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.

Ranking my BAEs (weapon forms), part two

Posted on March 8, 2026 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

Let’s talk more about the Taiji weapon forms I mean, I’m pretty sure I’m going to do the Double Fan Form for the demo of my teacher’s school next Lunar Near Year. I had a whole post about musing over which weapon form I’ll do. It was my last post, and I narrowed it down to two different weapon forms–the Double Saber Form and the Double Fan Form.

To briefly sumarize why I decided not to do the others: I love the Sword Form, but it’s done as a group for the demo on a frequent basis, so I won’t do it for that reason. And even though I’m pretty sure it’ll be the right side, I don’t want to do the left side of a form that is already being done.

Saber is not a favorite of mine. I have learned to appreciate it after hatting it from the start. It wasn’t the weapon’s fault; I expecetd it to be like the Sword Form except heavier, but it wasn’t that at all. it has a totally different feel to it. You have to move it differently, and its spirit is much heavier than the sword.

My teacher told me the saber was for cavalry as they were used as meat shields. it was considered the lowest of the forms–or rather the easiest to learn. The Sword Form, which was the first form I was taught is considered the second most difficult form. When I asked my teacher why that was the first weapon to be taught, she didn’t really have an answer.

The staff/spear is the hardest weapon to learn, by the way. I know a few drills, but it’s not really one you can practice alone, apparently. Meaning, there really isn’t a Staff Form. I think there is a Spear Form, but I am not sure about that. I would love to do a two-person Spear Form, but it’s pretty far down on my list of weapons to learn.

Right now, I’m concentrating on the left side of the Solo Form. I taught it to myself many years ago, but my teacher’s teacher was in a ‘let’s improve everything at one time’ mood by the time I got to the third section of the form. He kept changing it, and it was frustrating me. I know that forms are meant to be living and to be updated, but I needed to learn it first before I could start tweaking it. I decided to set it aside until my teacher’s teacher was satisfied with it for a measure of time.

I’m back at it because, and I hate to admit this aloud, I feel some shame that I don’t know the left side of the basic form. I’ve been studying for twenty years, and I should have taught it to myself fairly early on. I learned the right side (the basic form) within the first year. So, it’s about time to right that wrong.

Ranking my BAEs (weapon forms) for a reason

Posted on March 7, 2026 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

A few months ago, after I finished teaching myself the Double Fan Form, I was talking with my teacher about it and how hard it was for me–to a surprising degree. It wasn’t that I thought it would be easy–well, if I’m going to be completely honest, I did think it would be if not easy, then smooth-sailing.

See, I am good at weapon forms. At learning them, I mean. Learning forms in general, I’m decent at. The Sword Form was the first weapon form I learned, and it was a breeze. Seriously. It was the most natural thing I’d ever done in my life. I loved it so much, and it was all I ever wanted to do with my life.

I’m not going to go through all the other weapons I’ve learned/taught myself, but suffice it to say that except for the Saber Form (which I learned second and mistook it for being the same as the sword but just heavier. It was so very different. Once I internalized this, I was able to learn it fairly easily).

When I decided to teach myself the Double Fan Form, I thought that it would go smoothly. I had already taught myself the Fan Form and the Double Saber Form. Both were intense, but they were both doable.

The longest it had taken me to learn a weapon form/teach one to myself was three months. I thought that should be enough to teach myself the Double Fan Form. And this was after watching several videos of it. I could not find a Yang-style form, so I chose the official Chen-style version with the resolution to adapt it as need be.

Keep that in the back of your mind as I tell you why I’m talking about all the different weapon forms that I have learned/taught myiself.

As I was talking to my teacher about learning the form and how hard it was, we were also talking about the demo that her school always does every year right around the Lunar New Year. She said that she would love for me to do the Double Fan Form for this year’s demo. This was in December, I think, so just two months before the demo.

I quickly said that I would not be ready for this demo (especially as we were talking about me doing the Double Fan Form). She said maybe for next year’s demo as it was a big anniversary for her teacher. We left it at that and moved on with my private lesson.

Yesterday, she was here for my private lesson. She mentioned her teacher’s big teaching anniversary next year (50th). She said that she really would like me to do one of my weapon forms for it. I immediately realized it was not a request, and I said that I would do it. She said that she would leave which form it would be up to me. I immediately said that it would be cool to do the Double Fan Form. She agreed without hesitation, mentioning that no one else in the studio knew that form.

Mindfulnot, not mindfulness (part three)

Posted on February 7, 2026 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

Yeah, I’m back for part three of my musing on mindfulness. Here’s part two in which I talked about, well, I’m not really sure what. I think I had more side notes tahn I did actual post. That’s just the way I roll, though. I make no apologies for it. I will footnote you all. day. long. I have footnoted footnotes before, and I will do it again.

That’s a word I love, by the way. Footnote. Side note, too.

Back to mindfulness. When I started researching the negative sides of mediattion, I expected to find nothing. I thought it was just me because people seemed to be universally positive about it. “It calms my mind!” “It makes me see the world in such a different way!” “It eases my anxiety!” “It connects me with the world!”

I know that there are proselytizers for anything and everything. I know that. I have lived that. I am careful not to do that myself because I can tip into that way too easily. And, I’ll be honest. The more praise something gets, the more suspicious I am of it. Not because I think it’s going to be trash, but because I know it won’t live up to the hype.

There is only one movie that I ever ended up really liking after being skeptical about it before going to see it and that was The Royal Tenenbaums. I don’t like many of the actors in it, and I did not have hope. Much to my surprise, I really liked it. Other than that, though, I am pretty accurate as to what I’m going to (not) like.

I really wish I had known I was neuroatypical earlier in my life. It would have made things so much easier. Things fell into place once a friend gently suggested that I take online autism test. The irony is that I knew my brother was autistic several decades ago beacuse he exhibited classic autistic traits–no eye contact, did not like being touched, very into techie things (there’s a picture of him gumming an alarm clock when he was a baby, and my mom told me he took it apart around the same time), had to do things his way, and basically stimmed (before it was a known thing).

A few months before my medical crisis, I was talking to my brother, and I casually said something like, “Because of you being on the spectrum–” He stopped me and asked me what I meant by that. I scrambled and backed up, but in the end, I told him what I meant. We’re pretty open with each other, and I did not want to lie to him.

A few weeks later, he called me to tell me that he had looked up autism and it really helped him. i felt bad that I hadn’t told him before beacuse I thought it was obvious and because he knew his older son had it–and his son was a lot like him.

It’s funny to me that he had no idea that he was autistic and needed me to tell him whereas I also had no idea that I might be and needed a friend to suggest I check it out. I thought I might have ADHD, but I never in a million years dreamed I might be autistic as well. Why? Well, mostly beccause of how autism is portrayed in society. What is emphasized when autism is mentioned? Male, stimming, can’t look you in the eye, can’t empathize with other people, low-to-no emotions.

More on being mindful and meditation

Posted on February 6, 2026 by Minna Hong • 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?

Mindfulness? More like mindlessness (part two)

Posted on February 6, 2026 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

Today’s word is mindfulness. Words I don’t like, I mean. That’s what I’m focused on these past few days. I can hear you wondering aloud what issue I could possible have with mindfulness. Being aware of one’s inner sensations, feelings, etc., as well as one’s outer environment can’t be a bad thing, right?

Of course that’s a leading question. I would not ask it if I did not have an answer that was counter to what common belief is. I will say that I get the point of mindfulness and I am not saying it’s completely bad. What I will say is that it’s not universally good, either.

Side note: Twenty years ago, it was not a thing. Now, it’s a big thing. Being mindful, I mean. I know that things change over time, but it’s bemusing to me in this case.

Roughly seventeen years ago, my Taiji teacher started to incorporate meditation into her classes. I struggled with it from the start, and at a certain point, I started having flashbacks. I told her I could not do it any longer. She put a pair of practice deer horn knives in my hands and showed me how to walk the circle. I fell in love with the deer horn knives, which I have talked about several of times. This post is not about that, though.

Once mindfulness became a societal thing and somewhat of a godlike idol for many people, I became intrigued by the phenomenon–and lowkey irked. Not just because I’m a contrarian who hates it when something becomes a snake oil answer for everything that ails you, but also because, well, it makes me wonder what I’m missing.

Here’s the thing. Mindfulness is like ASMR to me. If I had no reaction to it, then I would just let it go. I hate ASMR. It sends me into an instant rage (well, certain types of ASMR. Funnily enough, I read a story from someone who in some professional capacity studied ASMR? Shilled the positive benefits of it? Something like that. He said with a straight face that ASMR could not fail anyone; it can only BE failed by a person.

He did not say that exactly, of course. But that’s what he meant. He said that no one actually had a negative reaction to ASMR because ASMR was a positive reaction. Gotta love that circular meaning! I get what he was trying to say, but to me, that’s not a legit answer. It’s pretty amusing that he wants to make it so that ASMR is negative reaction-proof. He went on to say that if the people who reacted negatively could actually feel the ASMR properly, they would react positively to it.

A small sliver of hope

Posted on January 27, 2026 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

Throughout this horror shitshow, I have had been almost overwhelmed by anger, depression, futility, fear, and a whole host of other negative feelings.

Once again, before I get into it, I have to give thanks that people are videotaping what is happening on the daily because it’s so much easier to refute the lies coming out of this federal administration on a regular basis.

Because of this, Gregory Bovino, is being pulled out of Minnesota. Rumors are that he’s being demoted or ‘allowed’ to retired (read, forced to retire). If this happens, I will be dancing in the streets because rightly or wrongly (probbaly wrongly), he has become the focus of my ire. Why? Because he’s here. He’s actively hurting my state. Like, physically. Because he dresses like he’s part of SEAL or some elite military squad like that.

He so desperately wants to be John Wayne, it’s pathetic. Also, I did not realize/remember that border ppatrol and ICE are not actually law enforcement. They want people to think they are, but they are not. Despite what the leaked memo says, they don’t have the legal right to go into the home of a legal citizen without a federal warrant. That’s not going to stop them, but I needed to remember that, for my own sanity.

He lies without hesitation and without remorse. He did it so relentlessly to a judge, she said that she could not take anything he said as truth (paraphrasing). I’ll post a video below of Jana Shortal, a local news anchor (and my local crush) and a colleague talking about this very topic. I have to give reporters credit for trying to hold his feet to the fire, but he just blusters, gets angry, talks over them, or the interview gets cut short.

I hope he steps on a Lego ever three to seven minutes at varying intervasls. I hope he never finds the cool part of his pillow as he tries to sleep. I hope his pants are always just a bit too tight and I hope that he never sleeps well again. Also, if he’s ‘allowed’ to retire, I hope that his every minute in of retirement is empty and painful.

As for Noem, the call for her impeachment grows louder. 140 signatures so far, and it’s only growing. There are also calls to remove Stephen Miller. Let’s throw the whole lot out and try again. Can we have a do-over on the 2024 election?

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