Back to write more about the Double Fan Form. Here is my post from yesterday in which I wander all over the place, but my main point was how I’m still struggling. A lot. I had to go back and rework a couple postures because I had learned them incorrectly. It’s not unusual to have to do some refinements, but I’m learning it wrong more than I have any other form.
In the past, I have taught myself new postures in a form on a daily basis. Unless I’m retconning my memories (which is very possible). As I mentioned yesterday, I inhaled the Sword Form (my first form) from the second my teacher put a wooden sword in my hand. I could not get enough of it, and I knew I wanted more of that in my life. I learned it in a very short amount of time.
Then, I taught myself the left side in a similarly short amount of time. In fact, the only time I got stuck was with the easiest posture in the form. That’s because I probably didn’t pay enough attention while learning it on the right side. It was easy! Why would I need to concentrate on learning it? Because it wasn’t as easy as I thought it was. Or rather, reversing it wasn’t that easy.
Besides that hiccup (which took me twenty minutes to get over), I had no problem teaching myself the left side of the Sword Form. I don’t want to guess how long it took me to teach myself the Sword Form on both sides, but in retrospect, it feels like it was a breeze.
I mentioned in yesterday’s post that even with the dreaded Saber Form, the form that I struggled with the most as I was learning it, I did not have trouble learning the form itself. It was more that I did not feel comfortable doing it, but I learned the postures fairly easily.
In the case of the Double Fan Form, I am making slow and steady process, yes, but it’s so very slow. And it’s not always progress. I’m frustrated, which is not something I usually feel whilst teaching myself a new form. Or learning a new form.
When my teacher said (wrote) spontaneously, “Wow, this is really hard!”, I felt a sudden burst of relief. I had been struggling with it for a month, and I was feeling downtrodden. This is one of the difficulties with learning things easily, I sometimes lack the grit to buckle down when things aren’t breezy from the get-go.