Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: martial arts

More about weapons and me

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As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, my teacher told me that her teacher (Sifu) had mentioned that you could do the Sword Form with two swords, one in each hand. I have a feeling that she told me this before because when I tried it, I felt a sense of deja vu. Which might be real or not.

At any rate, it’s pretty awkward. I’m not sure I’m doing it right, but I’m also not sure how I’m supposed to do it. The note from my teacher’s teacher (via my teacher) was that the helping hand was as important as the main hand. That meant I should concentrate on the helping hand , but It feels awkward to do the helping hand movements with a sword.

Also, my brain doesn’t do well with trying to do two things as once. I mean, I can multitask as far as listening to music and writing at the same time. As long as I don’t get drawn into the lyrics. But because of my brain damage, I have a hard time doing two separate things with my hands. At least with the two swords doing the (Solo) Sword Form. The Double Saber Form is meant to be done with two sabers, so it makes sense. Trying to do the helping hand movements with a sword is hurting my brain.

I’ll keep trying, though. It may be that it has to click at some point, and I have to give it time. I am used to being able to do things from the start, and if I don’t, then I give up. It’s a lasting legacy from being gifted. Things came easily to me for the most part, so I didn’t develop the fortitude to persevere. Plus, my parents had a bad habit of criticizing me immediately whenever I did something wrong. Or in the case of my father, making fun of me for messing up.

Because of that, I am hypersensitive to making mistakes in front of other people. I feel ashamed, stupid, and like a failure when that happens. Even though intellectually I know that everyone makes mistakes, it’s been beaten into my head that this is not something I’m allowed to do. And if I do mess up, then I should 1. endlessly ruminate over it in order to prevent myself from doing it in the future; 2. should strive not to ever do it again at all costs; 3. feel like a shitheel for dong it in the first place.

I’ve told this story several times. When K was separated from her husband, she talked about it with her mother who said, “K, you will be fine. If you end up divorcing, you will be fine. If you stay together, you will be fine.” I laughed ruefully because my mother would say the exact opposite. She would bring up all the reasons why I would not be fine if I left my (hypothetical) husband and all the reasons why I would not be fine if I stayed with him.


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Even more about martial arts and me

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I skipped a post for today becuse my brother came to visit late last night during the time I would normally write the post for that day. In addition, it was daylight changing time last night, which meant we lost an hour during the night.

Side note: Can we please do away with changing the clocks twice a year? There is no good reason for it any longer, and it just throws everything out of whack. I don’t care which way they choose, but just do it. We have indoor lighting and no longer need to rely on the sun.

In addition to that, Saturday is the one day I actually have to get up at a certain time because I have class at noon. These days, that means getting up at 11:30 a.m. or so. I don’t do my individual practice on Saturdays now, but I don’t like that–even though I do have class.

Here is yesterday’s post about how once you know the rules, you can break/bend them. And how exhilarating it is to realize that the rules no longer apply to me. Or rather, that I can follow the principles of the martial art without following the ‘rules’. Basically, as long as it follows the principles, it doesn’t matter if it’s in the form or not.

The bottom line is that the forms are the way they are for health, mostly. Well, that’s how it used to be. Now that Sifu is incorporating Master Choi’s movements into the Solo (Long) Form, there are more applications/combat than before. When I first started, the Solo Form was way more health/flourish-focused. Master Liang loved the tassel form of all the weapons, and he loved putting everything to music. That meant that the counts were always even and sometimes he added movements just to make it look prettier or to fit the music. That’s not to say that he padded the form, but I was appreciative when Sifu cut out the fluff.

In addition, he made it vastly easier. There were some movements that were difficult for no good reason. When Sifu saw everyone fall on certain movements, he modified them or took them out.

I did not finish this post because Daylight Savings is really messing with me. So I’m doing it today instead.

In the last five years or so, Sifu has changed a great deal to the Solo (Long) Form. I think  it’s in part beacuse of the pandemic (having more home time and being able to focus on refinement), and I was frustrated at the time. Why? Bceause when he changes the forms, he doesn’t necessarily articulate that he’s doing it. My teacher has seen him do something differently, asked him about it, and he’s told her that he’s changed the way they did that posture. And then he may change it back a few months later.


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Ranking my weapon forms

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I love my weapons. I know I have said that several times (especially lately), but weapons are my life. I have finished teaching myself the Cane Form with the saber, and I decided to try it on the left side. Pleasantly, I was able to do the whole thing. Except two movements that I’ve also had trouble with on the right side as well. I rewatched my teacher’s teacher doing the Cane Form (with the cane), which helped. Then I kept doing it until I mostly got the hang of it. And then I was so tired. Here’s yesterday’s post about my fun with weapons.

It’s deceptive how much muscles it takes to do the weapons. I mean, not as much as weightlifting, obviously, but enough for me to feel it at the end of the day.

Today, I did the whole Cane Form with the saber on the right side. Then, I decided to give it a whirl on the left side and had very little trouble with it except for two postures in the fourth row. The same two postures that have given me trouble since I first learned the form. Watching Sifu (my teacher’s teacher) do it helped clarify a few things, but I’m still not quite there.

I’m not sweating it, though. I will get there at some point; I just need to keep working on it. That’s the deffirence between now and before. When I first started learning the Saber Form, I would not have had any confident that I could get through a sticky point. With the sword? Yes, because I love it so much. I did not feel the same way about the saber.

I want to rank the weapon forms just because I can. I have done this before, and it’s always complicated. Why? Because I love the different weapons for different reasons. If I were to say which weapon I absolutely loved the most, it would most likely be the double sabers.

Let me backtrack immediately. I fell in love with the sword the second my teacher put a wooden one in my hand. I have said this several times before, but I resisted learning the weapons because I was not a violent person. Yes, that was the rationale in my mind. Learning the combat reasons fdor the postures felt different to me. That was for self-defense, whereas learning a weapon felt more aggressive to me (at the time).

The second I closed my fingers over the hilt of a shitty wooden practice sword, I fell in love. I knew this was what I wanted to do fro the rest of my life and learned it as quickly as I could. My road since then has been rocky, but I’ve finally reached a point over a decade later where I feel like I’m pretty damn good at the weapons. Even though I’m teaching myself. Even though I’m making mistakes. I’m still on the road to being really damn good at this.


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Even more about gender and martial arts

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Back again to talk more about gender and martial arts. I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I had to slow down the rate at which I was teaching myself because I was messing some things up. For example, I recently re-taught myself the Fan Form because I realized I had forgotten whole chunks of it. Now, I have found out there are a few places that I’m fudging things. In other words, I need to go watch the videos again.

There are two problems when it comes to me learning martial arts forms. One, my memory is shit since my medical crisis.so I forget that which I have already learn. Not all of it, obviously, but enough to make it disconcerting. Weirdly, though, I am not being hard on myself about it. In the old days, I would call myself names and silently (or not so silently) scold myself for being stupid. This is the pressure of being raised in a hypercritical family.

I feel free, light, and airy when I’m doing my weapon forms. Sometimes, though, I feel fierce, strong, and ready to beat the shit out of someone. Not in real life, but in my mind. I don’t want to get into a fight for real, but I want to be in fighting form.

Working on my weapon forms helps with my depression and anxiety. Both have spiked lately, in a large part because of the landscape of America right now. When I can focus my anixiety and anger on a specific target, even if it’s imaginary, it really helps.

I really groove with combining the karambit and the fan. They could not be more different as weapons.. The karambit is a fast, small dagger that is meant to be used in quick movements. It’s fast, and indeed, furious. It’s dangerous. It’s meant to kill quickly. Maximum damage in a minimal amount of time.

The fan, on the other hand, is languid, slow-moving, and stealthy. You’re not going to see it coming in part beacuse you’re not going to think to worry about a fan. That’s just something you use to cool yourself down when it’s too hot, isn’t it? It’s a weapon that will lower someone’s guard and then I can poke them in the throat with it while their attention is on the karambit.

It really is the yin and the yang of weapons. I picked them to go together because they were roughly the same size (very roughly), but that’s it. They just work well together. I can’t tell you why other than what I’ve already said and good vibes.


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Gender, martial arts, and me (and society)

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Am I really going to write more about gender and martial arts? Why, yes, yes I am. Why? Because I can. And because I have more to say about it. Here is my post from yesterday in which I talked about finding a therapist. Mostly, I focused on how diufficult it is for me to find a therapist, even when I whittle down my epectations. However, as I was writing about it yesterday, I did another quick (five minutes) Google and found someone who fit very well. Except.

E is not a psychologist. I touched on why this is an issue for me yesterday, but I wanted to expand on it more in this post.

Look. I’m going to sound snobby, but so be it. I have run rings around my therapists in the past except for the last one. She was a Jungian psychologist whereas the others were social workers. And it’s easy to see the clear difference in the training. At least it is for me. I was a psych major in college, and I’m very adept at reading people. This is both a good thing and a bad thing.

It can’t hurt to at least talk to E, though. E has a free consultation and does both online and in-person sessions. I would do the former, which is not ideal, but the best I can do at the moment. And it’s better than nothing.

I have been expanding my weapon time because there is so much I want to learn. I got my new fan–the frame is metallic rather than plastic or bamboo. I have to say, I’m disappointed in it because it does not flick open easily. Maybe it’s because of the cold and it’ll be better once it warms up, but I would not count on it.

In addition, it does not close without a hitch, either. So my shitty seven dollar cheapo fan is actually better for the Fan Form than my more expensive metal one. I guess it makes sense given the intricacy of the fan, but I can’t help being a bit disappointed.

I have to pace myself. I was practicing the Swimming Dragon Form (Bagua), and I reached a point where I totally forgot what was next. I had been doing the first few movements on the left side, and I think that was messing with my brain. I watched my teacher doing the form, and it came back to me. Plus, I had to adjust a few movements, too.

I also tried using two fans to do the Double Saber form. That was interesting, but it did not work that well. The vibes were off, and I didn’t gel with the feel of it. It was fun to do, though.


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Even more about gender and martial arts

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I’m still on that gender/martial arts tip. And on that mental health tip. Here is my post from yesterday about how I am smarter than most therapists. I know how that sounds, but it’s true. No, smarts aren’t everything, but they are something. And for me, I cannot respect someone I can manipulate. One of the best things about my last therapist was that she would call me out on my shit. She was a psychologist, which I vibe much better with than the social worker mindset.

Here’s my issue with finding a therapist. I need someone who understands being a person of East Asian descent living in Midwest America. Then, toss in grief and family dysfunction, and we are narrowing the field rapidly. If I dare say queer, well, we might as well shut this shit down now. I know that I can’t have everything I want in a therapist, but it’s really hard to pare it down to the essentials.

I am a firm believer in therapy. I think it can be so helpful, and I got a lot from my last thearpist. But I had to go through half-a-dozen mediocre therapists before that. They ranged from bad to blah. One was really bad, but it wasn’t completely her fault. Another was nice, but inept. Another I can’t remember at all. My last therapist was the best, but she had her blind spots as well. She was focused on mother issues, which meant at times she was  biased for mothers in a way that was not helpful to me.

But the one thing I appreciated the most about her was the she called me on my shit. As I said, I had the tendency to talk circles around my therapists, but she would not let me do that. She would listen to me talk for several minutes. Then, she would cut me of and say something pithy. Early in our relationship, after one of my long ramblings, she said, “Minna, thinking is what got you into your troubles; it’s not going to get you out of it.” I protested, but she was right. Or rather, she was not wrong. I had the tendency to talk myself in circles without actually getting anywhere. I could get deep in the weeds without even touching on the actual isue. Much like my writing, come to think of it.

My point is, while I believe in therapy, I have a hard time doing it myself. The last time I tried, I looked at a popular website that is pushed by content creators. I was horrified by how it was run, though, and when I did more research into it, I realized that it was not good. Not just for potential clients, but also for the therapists who were working for it.


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Health, gender, and kung-fu fighting

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I have still more to say about gender and martial arts. That should not surprise anyone because once I get stuck on something, I go on and on and on about it. Yesterday, I talked about gender and what I think of it (not much). I’m so tired of talking about it, but it’s a big deal right now given the state of my country at the moment.

I have been voting for thirty years. I have voted Democratic almost every time*. I have not been happy about it most of the time because it’s just the least worst of two evils. The only times I’ve felt joyful about voting was for Barack Obama and Kamala Harris. Take from that what you will. I dutifully voted for whoever had the D by his (and yes, it was overwhelmingly male which says a lot about the Democratic Party, but taht is not what this post is about) name, but I never felt good about it. Or rather, rarely.

I know that I don’t belong to this time or place, but I also don’t think I would have fit in any time or place. And I don’t know how much fight I have in me to try to change the world for the better. I realize that I’m slipping back to where I used to be, more and more each day.

I know it’s because of inertia and because we tend to go back to homeostasis. In other words, we don’t move in a positive direction without being deliberate about it. Some people like my brother do it almost effortlessly. I envy that about him, by the way. If he thinks something sounds fun, he just does it.

When he was here a few days ago, he was telling me about his adventures in Taiwan and Thailand with his GF. Each day, they had a plan, but then they changed it on a whim if something else looked better. I remembered that from when we went to Taiwan together, and it was a nightmare for me.

I digress.

I tend to stick to my routines, and they work until they don’t. One big example is my sleep. I have always had shitty sleep, starting from when I was a kid. When I was six or seven, my mother would put me to bed at seven or eight, and I would put a t-shirt in the crack under the door so I could read until midnight. I have always liked the night better than the day.

When I went to college, I could not go to bed until 3:30 a.m, even though I had a class that was a quarter to eight in the morning. I would get up at 7:30 a.m. and race to class. I was so sleep-deprived that I could not find my portable alarm clock one morning. I looked for it for five minutes, and it was nowhere to be found.


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Martial arts are life to me

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I have more to say about martial arts, specifically Taiji and Bagua. Before I do that, though, I want to say that technology can be so frustrating. I mentioned yesterday that the videos  I was watching of the Fan Form suddenly stopped working. They were mp4s and were a bit spotty on Chrome, but I could watch them in the end.

Yesterday, Microsoft informed me that ‘something went wrong’ and to try again later. I checked in later, and it was still the same. I was flummoxed because I had literally watched the videos the day before. I Googled it, of course, and I tried the first couple hacks. I cleared the browser. I turned off my Ad Block (that wasn’t suggested, but I figured it probably had something to do wiht that–also why my Chrome was freezing and chugging, I suspected). I turned my computer off and on again. None of this worked.

I was getting frustrated. Technology is great–until it doesn’t work. Then it’s frustrating as fuck. To my surprise, I’m considered a heavy user. I don’t think I know that much about computers, but I’m pretty damn good at Googling things. I do reach my limit, though, and when I do, I get incredibly frustrated.

One of the suggestions was to try it on a different browser. I tried the videos on Edge, and they worked perfectly fine. I just talked to my brother about the problem (because he’s my techie), and he said he’d been having problems with YouTube on Chrome, too. I had been having that as well and had, indeed, called him about it. His suggestions was to reset Chrome (which he suggested for this, too). It worked somewhat before, but not this time. We both concluded that the issue was Chrome.

I thought it might be my AdBlocker, but who knows? As long as I can watch it on Edge (Edge!!), I’m good. It runs better on Edge, too. Chrome used to be good before it got so damn bloated. Maybe I’ll try out Edge for a bit and see if it’s better. It pains me to say that, but I’m very much a ‘use what works’ kind of person rather than brand loyal.

The funny thing is that Chrome is running fine on my desktop. It’s just my laptop that is having issues, and I don’t know why. Different Windows? Maybe. If it is AdBlock, maybe that’s a different version as well? No idea. Like I said, after I try three or four things, I’m stumped. I’m just glad it worked on a different browser.

I have included a winning Taiji Fan Form below. This one is performative, yes, but not as flashy or energetic as some of the other videos I’ve posted (this is a compliment, by the way, not a negative). It’s funny because even though she won, she made one obvious mistake that I could catch. As I’ve said before, that’1s not a diss, but just an observation that I’ve gotten much better at my weapon forms.


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Taiji, Bagua, and me

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Let’s talk more about the Fan Form. I worked on polishing it today, and I’ve already noticed little tweaks here and there that I had to make–from learning it this week.. Part of it is my now terrible memory and part of it is just human nature. Also, no one is perfect. While watching the video I’m following, I noticed a mistake or two on the part of the teacher. No shade because again, no one is perfect, but it says something about how much I’ve grown myself. Ten years ago, I would not have noticed the mistakes because I was still relatively new myself, especially to weapons.

It’s the same when I watch my teacher’s school’s demo. Her teacher is a master so I don’t see his mistakes very often (or at all). However, when one of his students does a form, I can see the little errors they make. Again, this is not shade. This is not me trying to put myself above them because I would make the same amount of mistakes they did if I presented any of the forms I knew. It just shows how much I’ve grown since I first started studying Taiji. Here is my post from day before yesterday about many things relating to martial arts.

I have included a different Fan Form below. It’s more aggressive than the one I know, and it has kicks and leaps in it. It’s breathtaking, and I would not mind learning it at some point. There are so many fan forms, and I could see spending your whole life studying just those. In searching for a good fan form video, I came across several. And I want to learn every one. Every single one!

I have to hold myself back, though, beacuse as my teacher said to me once, it’s better to learn a few forms well than to learn several dozen badly. She put it more diplomatically than that, but it’s what she meant. And I get it. I tend to get obsessed with things that interest me to the exclusion of everything else.   It’s the neurospiciness of my brain, and I have to decide when to feed it and when to starve it.

Ed. note: For whatever reason, the rest of this post got lost to the ethers. I probably thought I saved it and didn’t. I’m just going to continue this post and take it in whatever direction I want to go.

I am still brushing up on my Fan Form. I have completed my re-teaching of myself, but there are several places where I can tweak and/or tidy up. I can’t watch the videos, though, right now because Microsoft is fucked up in some way. So I just did it from memory, which was not great. My memory, I mean. There is a bit at the end that I would like to review, but I can puzzle it out and do my best until Microsoft fixes their shit.


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I’m getting serious about Taiji and Bagua

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I’m finally starting to get serious about the weapon forms–and I want to focus on the combat aspects of martial arts from now on. I’ve always cared more about that than the health benefits (though that is quite the perk, too.

Side note within the parathensis: I have nevur focused on the health benefits because while I appreciate them, they were just not at the forefront of my mind. They were what kept me alive, though, during my medicla clisis. For that reason, I think of the healtth benefits more fondly when I think about Taiji. It’s still not the main reason I do Taiji, though.)

I am used to being a weirdo, and I am fine with it. I know that a lot of people think of Taiji as a very chill martial arts–which it is, mind–but it’s still martial. I have mentioned this before, but when I used to be on Twitter, I would wax poetic about the weapons. Inevitably, there would be several women tweeting back at me in shock/indignation that I had that side to me. One woman said in a very disapproving tone (believe me, it came across very clearly in the tweet) that she wouldn’t have thought that I was that kind of person. When I asked her to elaborate, she said violent–she didn’t think I was violent.

Side note redux: This is one of the ways that patriarchy has been harrmful. Women and AFAB people are taught since birth that the most important factor for them is to be nice.  There are two quick and easy ways to cut a woman down–by saying she’s not being nice and by saying that she’s fat.

I learned to take the power away from the word fat when I was in my thirties. So many people used it as an epithet, and I jsut was not having any of that. I would say that I was fat, and if someone liked me, they would scramble to disagree with me. “Oh, no, you’re not fat. You’re just solid!” It was funny because by that time, I didn’t think of fat as a negative, but merely a descriptor.

Side not to the side note redux: This was also my reaction to people who were horrified that I didn’t like whatever popular media thing that was being discussed, whether it was The Beatles, The Big Lebowski, Seinfeld, or whatever else other people liked. I didn’t like any of them, and I made no bones about it. There was one woman on Twitter who simply could not believe that I didn’t like the things she did (and that she considered things everyone should like). She would say that she couldn’t see how anyone could not like them and then insist that I must like them.


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