I finished the Swimming Dragon Form today. My teacher calls it graduating when a student finishes a form, which I find charming. It just means you’ve been taught all the postures in the form. It doesn’t mean you are a pro at them or that you will remember them perfectly if at all. My teacher does not expect that, nor does she give you any shit if you forget. If anything, she goes the other way and explicitly states that her students are welcome to make all the mistakes without censure.
I’m pretty proud of myself for buckling down and finishing the Swimming Dragon Form. I have a hard time finishing things if I don’t do it right away. I tend to wander to other things, and I don’t have the will to go back to the first thing.
It’s been a few months since we worked on it in private lessons. That’s because I got distracted by other things I wanted to do such as learning the refinements to the Sword Form. And learning some of the refinements to the Solo (Long) Form. My teacher is amenable to going wherever I want, so it was up to me to drag us back to the Swimming Dragon Form.
There were maybe a half-dozen postures left, but they were all on the harder side. Or at least that’s how they appeared when I watched the video I took of my teacher doing the form. And they aren’t easy, per se, but they’re not as difficult as I thought they would be, either. I just needed to break it down and be more granular about it. I had to look at the right hand, then the left hand, then the feet. And the waist. Which is how my teacher breaks it down, though she lumps together the hands.
I was quickly exultant as I finished the form. The second-to-last posture is the most dififcult, and I had to watch it several times before I got it. Do I have it? I’m not sure I do, but I can at least fake it. I have the shape of it even if I don’t have the exact movements.
I told my teacher that I graduated from the form and looked forward to cleaning it up with her. We have a running joke about that beacuse one time she was gone and had a substitute. I think it might have just been me in the class. The substitute, let’s call her Jan, showed me five postures in the Sword Form, not well, and said that my teacher could clean it up for me. I was not pleased because I couldn’t take in that much information and she didn’t do it correctly or well, anyway.