Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: Bagua

Radically rethinking my sleep–and martial arts

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I have two things I want to talk about, so because it’s my blog and I can do what I want to, I’m going to write about both. Or one until I run out of steam and decide to write about the other one tomorrow. They aren’t directly related, but there are tendrils that grow out of each that entwine and become merged together.

Let’s starct with sleep. It sucks. The end.

Of course, that’s not all I have to say about it; I’m just getting started.

I have written about sleep so often, I’m begin to bore myself. But it’s getting worse, so I’m going to keep writing about it. About twenty years ago, my therapist at the time told me of an experimental treatment that was getting some attention. It’s to stay awake for three days (and nights) straight–72 hours in order to jumpstart your brain. (That’s a very grossly simple explanation of what it was supopsed to do.) When I tried it at the time, I made it roughly 62 hours before my bestie called me to say she had her baby–prematurely.

Follishly, I went to the hospital to visit them. I was out of my mind as I talked to K. I don’t remember what I said or if I even saw the baby  through the glass. I think maybe not? As I was driving home, which was the same as if I was driving home from her house, I forgot how to get on the last freeway I needed to travel to get home. When I got home, I went to sleep immediately. (I really, really, REALLY should not have been driving).

Did it jumpstart my brain? Not really. Do I think it’ll do it this time? Not really. But! I think it might interrupt the slide I’m experiencing as far as my struggle to get to bed at a reasonable time.

Side note: I do think there’s too much pressure to go to bed at a ‘good’ hour (which means before midnight I guess?) and to say that anyone who goes to bed after that time has a mental health problem. Yes, there are studies that show that people who go to bed ‘late’ suffer more from depression, but correlation is not causation, and I would wager it’s the other way around. (People who cannot  go  to bed before midnight get depression from trying to force their natural biorhythms to fit those of the world around them.)

That said, I would like to go to bed before the sun rises. I want to aim for 3 a.m. I think that’s reasonable for me (but not tonight).

Side note deux: I was watching a show in which the participants were talking about when do you conside the next day to have begun. These were night owls, andthey did not think of a new day beginning at midnight. I was excited by this because I have long given up that metric as the start of a new day. For me, it’s when I wake up–that’s the new day. Anything before I go to sleep is the same day. In the show I was watching, one person answered that anything until the sun rose was one day. Another said that if he was called anytime before going to bed to set up a meeting at any time after he woke up, that would be the next day, regardless of what time it actually was.


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Let’s talk about Taiji and Bagua

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I’ve talked in the past about how much I love the weapon forms in Taiji (and now, Bagua). I am grateful for the health benefits, but they are not the focus for me.

Side note: We’re supposed to get between twelve and eighteen inches of snow over the weekend. I am so excited, even if we only get half that amount. Prince has a song about snow in April (I will include the video below), and he’s right. We’re not even quite mid-March, and it’s still rare to get that much snow at this time. I mean, it’s rare in general, so I’m very excited. I don’t think we’ll get even 12 inches because predictions are wildly inflated, but if we get half that, I will be satisfied.

I’ve gotten my groceries and I ordered Indian today, so I’m set for at least the weekend. I’m very fortunate that I have DoorDash and InstaCart, but I don’t want to make them drive in the snow. That’s why I used both today rather than wait for the weekend proper. I don’t want to get stuck, and I don’t want anyone else to get stuck, either.

Anyway, I made it clear to my teacher from the very start that while I was happy that there were health benefits, that wasn’t my focus. Oh, I was so young and naive then. I mean, it’s not bad that I preferred the weapons to the hands-only Taiji, but I brushed it off like it was no big thing.

I mean, I was grateful that it helped with my back problems, but that was it for the health benefits. I didn’t think much past that.

I did appreciate that it helped with my mental health and helped me to set healthier (not healthy, but healthier) boundaries. And, now, it helps me to shore up my faltering mental health when I have to deal with difficult situations. I am much more prepared to handle it than I was twenty years ago, though still at a heavy cost.

For me, it’s all about the weapons. I am making myself learn the left side of the Solo Long Form beacuse it’s way past the time when I should have done it. Right after learning the right side of the from my teacher–and it’s the first form you learn, by the way–I should have taught myself the left form.

That’s how it works in general. My teacher teaches me the right side of a form, and then I teach myself the left*. As I was teaching myself the left side of the Solo Long Form, my teacher’s teacher was in his experimental phase. That meant that the form was constantly changing. I was in the third part of the third section (the very last sub-section) when this started happening, and I just could not do it.


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Talking more about weapons because I can, part six

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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.


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Talking more about weapon forms, part five

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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.


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Weapon forms? Weapon forms it is (part four)

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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.


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Let’s talk more about weapons, part three

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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.


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My goals for 2026, part two

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I’m back to muse more about the new year. We are in the first day proper, and I want to talk more about my three big goals. Here is my post from yesterday, which mostly focused on my writing. I want to add another step to reach my writing goal. I usually spend most of my time at my desktop, but I write at my laptop. I need to make the commitment to change computers before it’s time to go to bed. So, I’m going to say for now that I’m going to go to my laptop at midnight. That will give me more than an hour to write before going to bed.

Again, I want to give myself as much cushion as possible so that I will actually meet my goals. I want to set myself up for success, which is not something I usually do. Most of the time, I set myself up to fail by setting impossible goals. Not because I think I can do them, but because I feel I need to go big or go home.

To refine the writing goal: It has to be a solid hour of writing. I have had a hard time not stopping and starting, which didn’t used to be a flaw of mine. I had many, but I could write for hours without stopping. I don’t want to blame my medical crisis, but it’s possible that it’s responsible. Even though I’m not really affected in my daily life, I did have a stroke. That probably knocked something loose in my brain.

Let’s talk more about Bagua. Right now, I’m working on the left side of the Swimming Dragon Form (hands only). I am about halfway through, and it’s been mostly easy going. There have been a few postures that have fucked with my brain, but for the most part, I’ve been able to teach it to myself fairly painlessly.

I should be able to finish it in a week or two. Then, I will get started on the Bagua Deer Horn Knives Form. I just watched the video for it again, and I’m excited. I also watched my teacher’s teacher’s Karambit Form video. I had previously taught myself about a third of the form (thinking I was nearly done), and I want to pick it up again, too. It’s not canon Taiji, I don’t think, but I’m sure my teacher’s teacher made it so.

Do I think both are doable in one year? Yes. Am  I going to commit to it? No. Again, I’m trying to make my goals as attainable as possible. So, the official goal is to teach myself the Bagua Deer Horn Knives Form with the stretch goal of teaching myself the Karambit Form. Or, let me be more realistic. To re-teach myself the part I know. As I was watching the video, I noticed the places where I had got it wrong.

I love knives and swords. Probably to an unhealthy degree. For now, they are all practice swords and knives, meaning either dulled steel (my sword and saber), practice steel (flexible) (double sabers), practice steel part two (deer horn knives), or rubber (karambit).


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My goals for 2026

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It’s now 2026, which is surreal. Time seems to go faster every year, but that’s especially true of 2025. It went by in a blink of an eye, and now we’re in 20266. It seems impossible, but it’s true. I floated through 2025, not doing much of anything. I want to do more in 2026, but I need to be realistic. I am not a ‘do ten things a day person’, no matter how much I want to be one. Also, I am not going to go to bed before 4 a.m. Let me just admit it. In fact, it’s 4 a.m. now, and I’m just starting this post.

I have several poals I want to meet in the new year, but there are three major ones that I have at the top of my list. I’ll go through those first and then maybe tackle the others if I have time (and the will). These are not in any particular order.

1. I will write the first draft ofmy novemoir.

Yes, I’m still insiting on calling my writing project that as a mash-up of novel and memoir. I want to write the rough draft, which will be roughly 200+ pages. Probably more, but I’m making a safe estimate.

Let me break that down even further.

A. I will write an hour a day.

In the past, I have said that I will write 2,000 words a day. That was not a problem for the most part back before my medical crisis. I wrote 2,000 words every day for the better part of several years. Maybe a decade? I’m not sure, but it’s many years.

Ever since my medical crisis, though, I’ve been struggling. In the past, I have had novels galore in my brain, and I easily wrote the rough drafts like they were no big thing. For the life of me, I cannot get this one done. But, more to the point, I have not dedicated myself to doing it. It’s partly because I have not had to work for it in the past that I’m not good at steadily applying myself to something.

I want to make my goals reasonable so that I can actually attain them. This is the one that is the hardest, so I’m setting small goals.

B. If I can do A for a month, then I’ll move it to 2 hours.

This seems like a good mid-goal because it’s very doable. I can write 2,000 words in 2 to 3 hours if I’m steadily writing. If I can do one hour a day for January, then I’l lmove to two hours a day. By the way, I’m counting until I go to bed taht night as that day. So this would still be the last day in December in my mental files until I actually go to bed.


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More musing about martial arts in 2026

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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.


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Taiji (and Bagua) and me in 2026

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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.


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