Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: Bagua

Less is (sometimes) more, part three

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I want to talk more about weapon forms because I can. Here was yesterday’s post on the same subject. When I decided to teach myself the Double Fan Form, I naively thought that it wouldn’t be too difficult. After all, I taught the Fan Form to myself with relative ease.

Well, that’s not exactly correct. I did teach it to myself fairly effortlessly I thought. But then, a year or so later, I was going to teach myself the left side. I started running into places where I could not do it because I had been fudging it on the right side. This was roughly halfway through the form. I decided to go back to the video and refresh my memory.

Much to my surprise, I realized t hat I had forgotten whole chunks of the Fan Form. I remember teaching it to myself, but I had no memory of those missing postures themselves. There was a chunk in the middle of the  form and another chunk at the end. I took a deep breath and taught the whole form to myself again. I took extra pains to make sure that I had it in my body and was not just fudging postures when I didn’t get them.

It’s hard because my teacher believes in learning the whole form first and then refining it after. Which is great when there’s the opportunity to practice it in class every week. However, when I’m doing it on my own, it’s harder. Yes, I can watch the videos I have in a pinch, but I will say that it doesn’t completely replace in-person teaching.

Also, the obvious problem with teaching myself is that I can’t see what I can’t see. What I mean is that I can’t tell when I’m making mistakes or not doing a posture right. Of course, I could do the form for my teacher–if she knows it. She does not know the Double Fan Form, which I’m making my way towards in this post.

Once I had the Fan Form in my body, I decided to teach myself the Double Fan Form. I also wanted to teach myself the Double Sword Form, but there’s no official form. I also wanted to finish teaching myself the Karambit Form, the Guandao Form, and I’m messing around with a Karambit/Fan Form.

That’s too much. While I can probably teach myself two forms at the same time, I don’t think I would do justice to either. Plus, it would probably take twice as long as it would to teach myself one. So, obviously, doing two back-to-back would take just as much time if not less than trying to teach myself two forms at once.

I’m so impatient, though. I’m like the kid in a candy store in that I want it all. Now! I have taught myself several different forms, or at least part of them. Wu-Li Dancing Sword, which is very short; halfish of the Karambit Form (I thought I had taught myself all but the very end); Fan Form; Cane Form (with the saber, so technically Saber Form); and the second half of the Double Saber Form. Oh, and I’ve taught myself the left side of the Sword Form, Saber Form, Cane Form, and Cane Form with the saber. Oh, and the last third or so of the Swimming Dragon Form, hands only, Bagua.


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Less is (sometimes) more, part two

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A few days ago, I wrote a post about how I’ve pared down my daily Taiji/Bagua routine. For the past year or so, I had been feeling a bit of a slight drag when I did my morning routine. Instead of looking forward to and being eager to do it every morning (well, really afternoon, so it’s morning only colloquially), I did it with a sigh and a heavy heart.

I still wanted to do it, mind. I was just burned out.

Here goes the backstory.

I have OCD tendencies. It’s not full-blown OCD, and it’s probably not diagnosable. When I mentioned it to my therapist a few decades ago (then-therapist), she said to me in a stern tone, “You know you don’t actually have OCD, right?”

Yes, I know that. But I have OCD tendencies, and I am internally obsessed with many things. I have learned to keep it mostly to myself and to gauge how much to let out without seeming ‘weird’. Also, probably autistic, but that’s more likely to be diagnosable.

I could talk about my martial arts weapons all day long. Not the technical aspects, but the beauty of them and what they mean to me. I like to joke that they’re my romantic relationships, but it’s not far from the truth. What I mean is that each weapon stirs something in me that I could conceivably slap a romantic label on it.

The Sword Form is my first love. I have such warm feelings for it. No, it’s not the most exciting form any longer, but it’s the weapon form that started my love for the weapons. I have told this story a million times, but I’ll tell it once again.

A year or two after I started Taiji, I graduated from the Solo Long Form. All that means is that I learned the sequence–not that I was any good at it. Soon after, my teacher mentioned it was time to learn the Sword Form. I resisted. While I had started studying Taiji because I wanted to be able to defend myself and really liked the idea of learning the combat applications, I recoiled from the very idea of doing weapons.

I was a pacifist at the time, and weapons seemed too violent to me. It was only when I was walknig the circle with the deerhorn knives (Bagua, not the point of this post) as my meditation that I had an ideology-changing moment. I was focusing on the ‘opponent’ in the middle of the circle as I walked. In a second, I thought, “If it’s you or me–it’s going to be me.” Meaning, if it was the opponent’s life or mine, mine was going to win.


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Less is (sometimes) more

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I have been doing my Taiji/Bagua routine every morning (well, early afternoon because I don’t get up in the morning), and I have slowly been adding to it in the last decade.

It’s amusing to me that I couldn’t force myself to do five minutes of practice when I first started studying Taiji. For whatever reason, my brain just rejected any thought of practicing at home. Because of that, I added another class per week to attend, and then one more. Then, pandemic and everything went online.

That was when I got serieous about my weapons. Before that, I loved them, yes, but I wasn’t intense about it. Scratch that. I was intense about it, but I wasn’t yet obsessed. During the lockdown, however, I got very into the Double Saber Form–which was what my teacher had been teaching me when we went into lockdown.

I still had my private lessons with her, but they were online rather than in person. Plus, her Double Saber Form was not the best as she does not care as much for the weapons. It took me a long time to realize that because she was careful to be enthusiastic about them when I gushed over my love for them.

About halfway through the form, my teacher just stopped teaching it to me. It took me a while to realize that it was because we had hit the limit of what she knew of the form. Her classmate had done the Double Saber Form at their school’s demonstration a few months before the world shut down. I had fallen instantly in lust, and I knew I had to have that in my life.

I bugged my teacher to teach it to me until she gave in. When we reached the point where she was no longer comfortable teaching me the form, I starting it to myself. I asked my teacher if she was ok with it, and she was. I don’t know why I asked her, but the best I can come up with was that I felt it was the respectful way to deal with it.

I have continued to ask her before teaching myself a form. Again, I’m not exactly sure why, but it’s out of respect. And  I have acknowledged to myself that not only am I more interested in weapons than she is, but…I have a hard time writing it or speaking it into existence, but it’s true: some of my weapon forms are better than hers.

It sounds like heresy to me because she’s my teacher.  She’s been studying Taiji for over thirty years (I think). How dare I say that any of my Taiji is better than hers? Here’s the thing, though. I have put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into my weapon forms, and I know that she pays more attention to her hands-only forms. It’s just a case of difference preferences.


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Mental health and more

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I am really working on my sleep, which has gone haywire since changing the time. THis is one of my pet rants, but can we please stop changing the time? I don’t care which we choose, but let’s just leave it the same all year round. My god. We have fake lighting. We don’t need to be beholden to the whims of the sun any longer. For fuck’s sake.

On the bright side, I’ve been getting a decent amount of sleep. On the not-so-bright side, it’s been at all hours of the day/night/morning. I am concerned. I am trying to drag my sleep schedule back to going to bed by 2 a.m. and getting up at 10. It’s not happening, though, and I’m just not happy with myself.

Let’s talk Taiji a bit. And Bagua. I’m focusing on those because they are my lifeline. Without them, I don’t know if I could .

Side note: There’s a new game out called The First Berserker: Khazan (Neople). It’s a soulslike, though the combat is likened more to Sekiro. I tried the demo for an hour, and I quit before even getting to the first boss. Hm. There’s an easy mode (someone mentioned it in the Discord), which I had not known. But I did play the demo, and I presume there was an easy mode in the demo? If so, wouldn’t I have chosen that? I don’t know.

Anyway. I am so sick and tired of soulslike relying on the parry and having bosses taht are brutal. It’s like they took the least-interesting thing from From games (to me) and made them the focus of the game. When I tried the demo, the scrubs could kill me in three hits or so. It took three hits to kill a scrub. This is actually something  people mentioned about the game–that the enemy difficulty is badly calibrated. Andy Cortez from Kinda Funny said that he dumped all his points into Strength to get the max with as little health as he could get away with, but it still took him two or three hits to kill the scrubs.

I found the combat to be grueling and not satisfying. I think I went with the greatsword because the other options are dual-daggers and dex. As we all know by now, I don’t do either. So it’s greatsword by default. I don’t know if there is any kind of magic in the game, but my hunch is no.

Every fucking review talks about how brutal the bosses are, but how they came to love the drutality. Here’s one from IGN that typifies that sentiment. Meanwhile, I’m summoning humans for Shadow of the Erdtree because I do not want to struggle for hours with a boss. I did that with the final boss of the DLC the first time around. Five hours over two days after getting the boss down four or five hits on my second try. Did I feel exhilirated after beating the boss? Yes. But it was so fleeting and then exhaustion set in. I was so numb by that point, I was mostly just glad it was over.


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More about weapons if I may (and I may)

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Here is my post from yesterday in which I blathered about weapons. I am going to do more of the same in this post.

I have struggled with what to call myself in terms of my status, for the lack of a better word, because I was not and have not been a newbie for quite some time. I would never call myself a master, either, beacuse that’s well above my pay grade. Advanced student just feels right. It’s not too specific, but it’s not overly broad, either.

I would be down with senior student as well. These seem to have roughly the same meaning. I get that it’s still a pretty wide range, but it feels apt to me.

I have mentioned several times that I feel like a switch has been flipped inside of me. Roughly six months ago, I would have said that I liked weapons and really dug the forms. But I would not have said that I was…I dunno. Serious about them?

It’s hard to say because I have imposter syndrome. I think I’m worse at everything than I really am. Well, most everything. I am (or was) confident in my writing, my ability to talk to people (but that comes with massive downsides, and it was not something I chose to do), my charm (which I don’t want to abuse), and a few other things. And I’ve been confident in my weapon forms in that I learn them fairly easily.

But I was not doing hours of weapon forms practice a day. I was not min-maxing my weapons. I am so not a min-maxer–in games or in weapons. I talked about how I would look at weapon forums, and it was just not for me. I’m not a tech head in anything I do. I’m a heavy tech user, yes, but only to the extent in which it’s useful to me. I don’t care about specs except how much I need to to run what I want to run.

It’s the same with the weapons. I care only to the extent that they feel good and move nicely in the air. The spec themselves don’t matter to me. I will admit that looks matter to me. I want my weapons to look and feel good. I am a bit miffed that there are no really great fans. I bought a nice aluminum one, but it is so stiff. All the base ones have, ah, really bad printed pictures on them. Sigh.

It’s weird, actually. I don’t understand why I can’t find a better fan than the ten dollar one I have. I mean, I can find a slightly better version and have (with bamboo ribs rather than plastic), but the pictures on the better ones are still pretty basic. I know that’s a minor point, but I would feel so much better if I could find a prettier fan.


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Weapons all day long

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I’m still on that weapons tip. Well, as much as I can. There are other things in my life that are not good, but I’m trying not to think about them at the moment. In yesterday’s post, I rambled about weapons, life in general, and why I need this. By ‘this’, I mean weapons. I’m feeling very bleak about the world right now, for personal and political reasons. I am not pleased with the state of, well, everything. Weapon forms are one thing that actually fill me with joy. They give me meaning and hope. Well, maybe not hope, but something positive to focus on.

Back in the day, Marie Kondo was hot for about ten seconds. Her phrase ‘sparks joy’ seemed to be everywhere (you should only keep something if it ‘sparks joy’ in you), and I will admit that I got sick of it. But, I will say it fits for the weapons. The weapon forms definitely spark joy in me. And that’s something I don’t have much of these days.

I’m having an ongoing issue with Xfnity, and I have no clue how to solve it because it’s impossible to get a person to talk to. I tried to the last time this came up and could not talk to an actual person. I did what I could to mitigate the issue, but it’s come up again. And I’m going to have to go through the motions to try to fix it, knowing that it’ll fail. And that because they’re a fucking monopoly, I can’t switch companies.

I’m going to do what I can to deal with it, but I’m probably going to end up throwing money at it. I’m not happy about it, but that’s really all I have. And, I’m tired. I just don’t have the energy to deal with it. There’s a saying that sometimes the best thing you can do is throw money at a problem.

My brother and I have had a friendly argument about this. He is all about saving money. (Except when he isn’t. He has his passions, just like anyone else. But he is unusually frugal in most aspects of his life.) He will spend hours doing something if it will save him a buck or two. I, on the other hand, would rather spend a few extra bucks to save time. I don’t think one way is better than the other–it’s just a matter of what you value more. For the longest time, my brother insisted that his way was best. I tried to get him to see that saving ten bucks, but ‘spending’ an extra two hours really wasn’t that cost efficient.


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Weapons are my life

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Let’s talk even more about weapons. I love them, and they are my passion. Today, I firmed up the Swimming Dragon Form. Not a weapon form, but still something invigorating (and new, to me). I love it so much, and I’m eager to teach myself the left side. I’ve done the first four or so movements as a way to practice doing it on tnhe other side. I have not had a problem teaching myself the left side of other forms, but the Swimming Dragon Form is giving me a bit of trouble. I’m not too down about it because it’s a new martial art completely, the walking the circle meditation notwithstanding.

My impulse is to jump immediately into the left side of the Swimming Dragon Form. I don’t think that’s a good idea, though. I’m still a bit iffy on the right side. I have to say that it’s been refreshing to do something completely new and different. I wouldn’t say it’s been hard, per se, but it’s not been a breeze, either.

Just a note: I am a fast learner for many things. In part because I don’t do things I’m not instantly good at. I’m not saying this is a good thing, but it’s how I am. It doesn’t help that I’m good at many things. I have not built up resilience in my being when it comes to things I suck at. It doesn’t help that I got shit on by my mother if I was anything less than perfect from the rip. My father would feel the same, too, if he could be bothered to care about me at all. As a person, I mean.

It’s weird. Now that he is in deep dementia, he cares more about me than he ever has. Or rather, he wants the attention from me that he never really cared about when he was here. I still don’t think he cares about me as a prson, but he’s lonely. My mother and brother have told me that no one visits him. My mother is upset that his family doesn’t see him, but, to be brutally honest, I don’t blame them.

First of all, my mother uses guilt as a way to get what she wants. Like saying one of my cousins owes so much to my father because he’s done so much for her. Ok, my mother didn’t say the first part out loud, but she implied it. And she definitely said the latter part to my cousin. In her mind, my father is the most important person on earth, and she can’t see why other people don’t see it the same way.

Here’s the thing. My father is not a pleasant man. He never has been, but in the past, he had a veneer of charm that allowed him to get away with being a deeply self-centered and selfish person. Now, however, that veneer is gone. It’s understandable, honestly, given his condition, but it doesn’t make him easy or pleasant to be around.


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Keeping it real with my weapons

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I had my private lesson today and even though it was only forty degrees out (felt like thirty-five or so), we decided to have it outside. It felt warmer than that, probably because we’d been in single digits for so long. Kind of. We were supposed to get get snow today, but the snow front missed us. We did not get one single flake of snow, sadly. That does not mean that we will not get snow later as we’ve gotten in June before. Yes, June. That was once, very brief, and it did not stick–but still. It was snow in June. That’s highly unusual, but it’s not unusual to get snow in April. In fact, Prince who was from here had a song about it.

No snow for now, though. I left it up to my teacher whether she wanted to be outside or in because I was fine being outside in forty degrees. It was so nice out and felt warmer than that. I like practicing outside for another reason–lots of room. Now, I’m not complaining about my space beacuse I have plenty. But practicing weapons needs a lot of space–and just a bit more than  I have.

I know that’s a privilege, by the way. The fact that I have plenty of space. That’s why I’m not complaining about being a bit cramped–just noting that it was nice outside. The sun was shining and there was a crisp bite to the air. That is my favorite combination; it perks me up and gives me the edge I need.

I asked about the Fast Form and the Short Form. She said both were worth learning (because I asked), but her voice wasn’t as enthusiastic as it normally was. Which means that it’s worthy, yes, but not something I need to worry about right now.

We concentrated on the last four or so movements of the Swimming Dragon Form. As much as it’s good to watch the video I took of her, it’s much better to see her demonstrate in person. Not only can I ask her questions, but I can see the postures in question from all angles. That’s one of my favorite things about being in person. I can walk around her as she’s doing the posture, which is so helpful.

In addition, she is now showing me the applications for the postures, which is my absolute favorite. The one I was having difficulty with was the second-to-last posture. It’s something like The Bear Turns Over the Body. I mean, it’s not that, but it’s close. And no matter how many times I watched the video, I did not quite get what she was doing. Oh, the name is about a bear turning over your body, not theirs, by the way. And my teacher showed me the application for this move along with the last movement, which is conclusion.


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Getting (more) serious about weapons

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As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I graduated from the Swimming Dragon Form. That simply means that I taught myself all the movements in the form. Have  I mastered them? No. Am I confident that I will be able to reproduce them faithfully tomorrow? Also no. I mean, up until the last five or six movements, yes. But the ones I’ve learned in this last week? Those might take a bit longer to stick in my brain.

It’s funny. I videotaped my teacher in October of last year doing the whole form. At the time, I had eight movements left to learn. Or maybe ten. I quickly taught myself a few more until I only had a half-dozen left. I stopped because the next movement looked so intimidating. Plus, I got distracted by other stuff. I also was sort of waiting for my teacher to teach me. But we kept getting distracted.A few weeks ago, I decided to finish it and then my teacher could help me figure out the kinks later.

Much to my surprise, it was easier than I thought it would be from watching it six months prior. I am pretty sure it’s because I’ve been practicing every day, and you know what they say about practice. I don’t think it makes perfect, but it definitely makes you better. I mean, it makes sense, right? If you do the thing several times every day, then it becomes muscle memory and a habit.

I’ve been doing bagua for…maybe close to a year now? No, not quite. Probably more like eight months. I’m getting better at keeping my weight back, but it still doesn’t feel quite natural to me. I’m so used to keeping it forward for Taiji that it feels almost sacriligious to keep it back for Bagua.

I think that’s one of the main issues I have with Bagua–or rather, the main difficulties. It’s not Taiji. I have been practicing Taiji for over fifteen years on its own. In that time, I’ve done a bit of other martial arts, but not on a regular or constant basis. My teacher showed me how to walk the cirlce with Deerhorn Knives over a decade ago, and I was hooked. I did it every day (without the knives as well as with, alternating), and it’s one non-Taiji thing I’ve done for the last decade.

I don’t know why I decided about a year ago that Bagua was somtehing I wanted to do seriously. Oh, wait. Yes, I do. It’s because I love the Deerhorn Knives so much, and my teacher insisted that I had to learn the Swimming Dragon Form first. It made sense because that form is the basis for the whole martial art, much like the Solo (Long) Form is the basis for Taiji.


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I need to talk more about weapon forms

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Today in class, my teacher mentioned that her teacher (Sifu) had been talking about the Sword Form and how important the helping hand was. He said that you could do the Sword Form with two swords instead of just one, so she suggested that to me because I’d told her that I wanted to do a Sword Form, but could not find one.

I don’t have two metal swords, but I do have a few wooden ones. I could try that or one metal and one wood. I don’t know how well the latter would work because they won’t be balanced, but it’s better than nothing. Let’s face it–I’m well on the way to talking myself into buying the double sword set from Kungfu Direct. I already watched a video reviewing the set, and the man was quite complimentary about it. In the meantime, I’ll see what I can scrounge up.

I just found out that Kungfu Direct also has deerhorn knives, but it’s under deer horn so it did not come up when I searched for deerhorn. I found them when I was browsing the non-Taiji weapons. There are also double axes, which are really cool. I am truly like a kid in a candy shop as I’m browsing the goodies (weapons).

The double saber set I want is not available. There’s another more expensive set with longer blades that is available. I’m not buying it for now, but I definitely have my eye on it. I’m also not getting the nice set of deerhorn knives yet beacuse I haven’t even started using them. And for now, the practice set will do me just fine.

In yesterday’s post, I talked about how I had a crushingly low self-esteem for much of my life. It’s a combination of having parents who did not like anything about me, belonging to two societies that believed woman and AFAB people should fit in very small boxes, and my weird brain just operating differently than ‘normal’ people’s.

The last time my mother and I talked about my medical crisis (about a week ago), my mother immediately said she was so grateful I had survived. The reason why? Because I could talk to my father when he was having one of his episodes. A month or so after my medical crisis, she said she was glad I had lived beacuse she had no one else to talk to.

Notice that neither of those answers were, “I’m glad you’re still alive so that you can live a full life.” Indeed, neither answer was about me at all. One was about her and the other was about my father. This is not a surprise, by the way, but it still hurt.

Other people talk about their parents and how much their parents love them. They take it for granted that their parents have their best interest at heart, which is something I’ve never thought at all. Sorry about the sentence structure, by the way. I know it’s awkward and ungainly, but hopefully, the message gets across.


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