Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: taiji

Let’s talk more about health in general

Let’s talk more about health in general. Here is yesterday’s post filled with ranting and ravings about life in general. Despite my best intentions, I went off the rails as usual. Let me try to focus on the point I want to make. Which is that family dysfunction sucks. No, wait! That’s not the point I was trying to make. My point was that it’s hard to tackle health/diet without slipping back into thinking about the eating disordered thinking that my mother has exhibited all her life.

I’m trying to be healthier withouth becoming disordered. I have not been able to do this all my life, so what makes me thinkk that I can do it now?

I think it because I have fifteen years of Taiji under my belt. I think it because I still am thankful to my body for carrying me through my medical crisis–something I should not have survived. Here’s something that many people don’t know; it’s better to be ten pounds overweight than underweight if you suffer a medical crisis. I knew this before my own medical crisis, and it’s something I tell people whenever I can. I feel like a broken record, and most people don’t want to listen. It is so engrained in us that being fat is the worst thing in the world, many people can’t fathom that maybe it’s not true.

I remember several decades ago, I was listening to NPR (or MPR. I’m pretty sure it was NPR, though), and they had a doctor on. She was saying that as you got older, you should GAIN weight, not lose it. Partly for the reason I already said (it cushions your body if anything happens to it), but also for other reasons. Which I don’t quite remember. This reason, though, is the one that stuck in my head. That it’s better to gain weight as you get older to cushion your organs in case something really bad happens to them.

Anyway. I don’t like being fat. I am being truthful in saying that while I can still appreciate what my body has done for me, I don’t like how it looks. There are several reasons for that which I’m not going to get into at this moment. I’ve done it so many times in the past and that, while relevant, is not the point of this post.

I’m trying, yet again, to be healthier without falling into the trap of only carrying about being fat. I’m doing things like walking on the hour when I remember (as I mentioned yesterday). I’m trying to be more consistent with my fruits and veggies, and I think this is a good start.


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Lunar New Year martial arts demo, part two

In yesterday’s post, I was talking about the Lunar New Year’s demo that my teacher’s teacher’s school had done for Lunar New Year. They do it every year, and I’ve attended more years than not in the past fifteen years. I particularly remember the one in 2020 because it was right before the pandemic hit–and it was in this demo that my teacher’s classmate did the Double Saber Form.

Side note: This classmate started roughly the same time I did, and she’s the one I always compare myself to. She might have started a bit earlier, but I’m pretty sure it’s roughly the same time. And she is so much further than I am in terms of forms learned. She loves the weapons as much as I do, so I have thought about asking if she teaches. I don’t think she does, and I don’t know if it would be weird for me to learn weapons from her.

I dok know that my teacher does not care about the weapons the way I do. She hid it well for many years, but when I saated taking a real interest in the weapons, she had to come clean that they were not her baliwick.

It was a relief to find out. Well, not a relief, but instructive. I loved the Sword Form, but did not love the Saber Form. I have come to respect it, but it’s not my favorite. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I came across a video of my teacher’s teacher doing the Cane Form…with a saber. It blew my fucking mind. Once I watched it, it made sense (I have included the video below), but it wasn’t something I would think of on my own.

This is one of my limitations–I don’t just think I can make up a form just because. Come to think of it, it’s mostly the male students who think they can do this–for better and for worse. My teacher had a student who decided to make up a…I want to say Sword Form(?) after a year or so of studying. And that he could teach a friend how to do the Sword Form. He did the Sword Form at the demo and it was…not great.

It’s that culturalization thing again. AFAB ppeople are taught to be modest and not show-offy. The trouble is that show-offy often means drawing any attention to oneself when people from on AFAB people doing it.


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Lunar New Year martial arts demo

Today (Sunday) was the day my teacher’s home school had their Lunar New Year demo. It was broken up into three parts–the Taiji section followed by the Xingyi chunk and lastly, Bagua. I was watching on Zoom.

The demo started with everyone who wanted to participate doing the first two sections of the Solo (Long) Form.. It is always interesting to watch a group of people do it because of course, no one is going to do it exactly the same. They only do the first two sections because the third section is longer than the first wo sections put together, and there ain’t no time for that. The audience, I mean–not the students. My teacher’s teacher has learned over time that people get really restless after two sections.

Yes, Taiji is about patience and being chill, but we’re still Americans under it all. What with the TikToks, the Instagrams, and all the other short forms of entertainment, no one is going to sit for nearly twenty minutes of very slow movements.

They did the Sword Form, and I was pleased to see that I would have been fine doing it with them. I know many of them have studied as long as I have if not longer. I have seen several of them at many of the demos.

I was drawn to one short guy with a mohawk because of how beautiful his form was. I thought it was a certain person I had seen do different weapons in past demos, and I knew he loved the weapons as much, nay, more than I did. He guest-taught for my teacher once about a decade ago, and I was so intimidated by his prowess that I flubbed up a simple sword movement in front of him. He was the kindest guy ever, but something about how good he was with the weapons flustered me.

I found out it was him because the next demo was him doing something he had designed himself. IHe was drawn to sheathing and unsheathing a katana. He asked his teacher (also my teacher’s teacher) about doing that with a Chinese sword, and his teacher said that he (the student) would obviously have to design one and do it for the next demo. Which he, the student, did.

And it was fucking incredible. He demonstrated with two other students, and I was instantly struck with how regal and lethal it looked. It’s not what I’m mainly interested in, but it was really cool. There’s one that is based on an escort mission, and I wanted to learn that one. They were not all Taiji sword movements, which made it even more interesting.

I love Taiji. I will always love Taiji. I am happy to be adding Bagua to it, and I could see adding other martial arts at some point as well. My teacher is currently learning XingYi (she demonstrated the Sword Form at the demo), which is based on animal movements.

Every time I watch the demo, I want to learn every weapon form I see. I started the Double Saber Form because one of my teacher’s classmates did it at the demo right before the pandemic hit. That really ignited my passion for weapons, and I just can’t get enough of them.


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Martial arts are my life

I have been studying Taiji for over fifteen years. Yesterday, I was writing about how I did some light sparring with my teacher in our last private lesson. And how much I loved it. I am still in the midst of realizing that I am not a newbie any longer nor someone who simply studies Taiji. In class today, everyone was on Zoom because it’s been snowing (yay! Three or so inches. It’s not much, but it’s sure pretty). The other three students who were in class are all newbies to novices. It’s interesting to see them for once because it reminds me of when I was a newbie.

It’s hard to know what you don’t know, of course. And I still have major issues with my form such as having my hands too high andnot bending my knees. I’ve had my teacher give me refinements because it’s hard for me to see what I’m doing wrong, obviously. I’m not looking at myself as I practice and even if I were, I wouldn’t necessarily see what was wrong. When you do the same thing over and over and over and over again, you don’t necessarily notice the flaws.

It’s similar to how when you’re editing your own writing, you may not see your mistakes. That’s why it’s always better to have someone else editing your work for you.

I don’t know why it is that me re-learning the Fan Form is what has made me realize that I was not a dilettante any longer. I think because I was no longer just floating from form to form, dreaming about what I would do next. Instead, I made a concerted effort to clean up the forms  I knew. For whatever reason, that took it from me practicing Taiji to me being serious about Taiji.

Yes, it took me sixteen or so years to get there. What can I say? I’m a slow learner. Actually, the issue is the opposite of that–I’m too quick a learner, so I take it for granted that I can learn things easily. When  I can’t, my mind rebels.

It doesn’t help that my upbringing is within the Taiwanese culture, which is very strict on good and bad (what is which and what the standard should be for good). It’s either an A+ or an F. There is no in between. I have tried to move beyond that, but it’s hard. I still feel like I’m failing at life for many reasons, and it’s something that I don’t know if I will ever escape completely.

My mother sometimes laments the fact that I don’t tell her anything. Well, that’s when she’s not dumping her problems on me–which, admittedly she’s doing every time she calls. About two decades ago, she blamed my therapst for putting a wedge between her (my mother) and me. she’s not wrong that my therapst helped me individuate, but she’s wrong in blaming my therapist or thinking it was a bad thing*.


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Martial arts saved my and gives me life

I am studiously ignoring waves ot the world around me, well, everything. Glances at news and shudders in rage, disgust, sadness, and anger. There is only so much I as an individual can do, and I am just done. I have never been a super partriot because that’s just not my style, and now, I’m really disdainful of America. Not just the president, but also the people who voted for him or did not vote at all. I am feeling fury like none other, not even the first time he was president.

That’s not the point of this post, though. If I start on that, I. Will. Never. Stop. And nobody wants that–not even me. Instead, I want to talk about something that makes me feel good–Taiji. And Bagua. I will note that my teacher had said about a month before the election (after Biden dropped out, whenever that was) that there was no way Harris was going to win. I thought she was being unnecssarily pessimistic, but as I told her in our private lesson (Thursday), she was spot on. She said she hated being right, and I agreed–but it was stil impressive.

Anyway. My goal in martial arts in this year was gonig to be learning new forms or teaching myself the left side of forms I already knew. I started by teaching myself the left side of the Fan Form, but then realized about halfway through that I wassn’t fudging some of the movements in the right side of the form. Like, badly.

Side note: We all do this in Taiji–fudging movements we don’t know. Why? Because it gets worse and worse over time if you don’t correct it. Now that I’ve been looking at videos of my teacher (and her teacher) doing different forms, I can see where I’ve gotten sloppy. I’m big on watching the videos now, especially since my memory suuuuuuucks. I can watch it and then immediately forget what I just saw. In fact, I can watch a clip three or four times in a row and still have to watch it once more.

I’m very happy with how I’m cleaning up my forms. I still have a few things to iron out with the Cane Form (my least-favorite form), but I’m feeling pretty good about the Fan Form (fast becoming one of my favorite forms). I’m still marveling at how much of the Fan Form I had fucked up the first time around. it’s a lot, by the way. I fucked up a lot. I’m not too hard on myself about it, though, because I was just recovering from my medical crisis so I’m astounded that I remembered any of it at all.


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Still kungfu fighting

In yesterday’s post, I was writing this and that, not with any real focus. But it was about Taiji, mostly. And, yes, I will be writing more about it again.

I have said before that I am a mix of regulated and free-wheeling. This is evident with my Taiji practice, too. I do the same thing every day when it comes to the stretching and the warmups. Usually in the same order, but sometimes…not. Sometimes I get a bit bored and mix things up, but most of the time, I go in the same order we do it in class. When I can remember it. It’s funny for something I’ve done a million times, I can suddenly forget what goes before what.

It’s something that hearkens back to what I was saying, actually. Yes, it’s good to have the routine and do things over and over so it becomes a habit. Yens, it’s good to get it in your bones so that it’s automatic (but you should still be thinking about it). At some point, though, ti’s not about the routine–it’s about the Taiji. I know how eye-rolling and cringe that sounds, but it’s true.

My teacher has said to me several times that the form is not a holy text (paraphrasing heavily), and we shnould not worry too much about getting it exactly right. As I mentioned yesterday, for all the supposed rugged individualism of America is very much all talk and no action. In reality, America is very much about conforming and bootlicking your ‘betters’ in order to not be thrown in the dungeons.

When it comes to exercise, there is the tendency to do the same thing over and over again. I want to emphasize there’s no shame in that bmecause  it’s so heavily embedded in our DNA. Even now, I ask my teacher about variations, and she tells me to use my best judgment.

I love that there are several different forms for each weapon. Below, I am including yet another Yang-style Fan Form that is just beautiful. The instructions are in Chinese which I don’t understand, but watching it makes it quite clear what to do (to me). It is different from the start, but the same basic principles are there.

I love the snapping of the fan, and flicking it open and close. There is something so satisfying about it. I think in part it’s because it’s the open weapon you can do that with. There is no opening and closing of any other weapon that I can think of.


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Taiji is the gift that keeps on giving

In my last post, I veered into the territory of FromSoft games as I was talking about Taiji because it was a comparison to something that I loved that did not love me in return. It’s also a reason as to why I love FromSoft games, I do not like most soulslikes. So many soulslikes think that being hard and grueling is all that makes a FromSoft game. Oh, and the current meta for soulslikes is to have the parry/deflect be king. I mentioned that yesterday as well, but I had to restate it because I hate it so much.

What I realized with From games was that I put up with the difficulty and the bullshit because I love the games so much. And what I loved about the games was the exploration, the level design, and the lore (which had to be dug up). I remember in the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC (Elden Ring), I was going for ages without finding another bonfire (site of grace). I was out of estus, and I had been dying over and over again. This was only the first section of the DLC, and it was already kicking my ass repeatedly. When I found a door and recognized that it was a shortcut, I actually teared up.

I opneed it with a sense of relief and elation. This was what I lived for in these games, and this was the high point of that session to me. The boss was soon thereafter, and while it was a great boss by design, it did not move me the way finding that shortcut did.

Back to Taiji. The one thing I would say about it is that it’s hard to get into from the start. At least it was for me, and my teacher says that’s not unusual. Especially in America where we are pushed to ‘give 110%’ all the time*. We’re supposed to go hard, and you’re called lazy, a failure, or not trying if you fall slack at any time.

One of the things my teacher emphasizes repeatedly is that Taiji is the lazy person’s martial art. To be honest, that’s why I chose Taiji in the first place as the martial art I wnanted to study. I am not big on exercising or exerting that much energy. There are several reasons for that, including the fact that I have difficulty calibrating when enough is too much.

I tend to be an all-or-nothing kind of person, anyway. Taiji has helped mellow that out, but it’s still something I struggle against. It’s a very American way of thinking, and it’s my mother’s anxiety talking as well.


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Taiji–loving something that actually loves me back

More about Taiji (and maybe Bagua. We’ll see). In yesterday’s post, I highlighted some of the differences between Taiji and Bagua. Today, I want to talk about my love for Taiji because I can. And because it’s deep. And it’s one thing I love that actually loves me back. I’m not talking about people–there are people I love who love me backI’m talking about hobbies/things. And I mean love in a looser sense, not actual, sentient love.

For example, I love FromSoft games (and have made that very clear), but they do not love me back. Ian has said that he thinks I’m the perfect recipient for the games (the average player who tries really hard), but I disagree. The games are brutal, despite the current retconning by From lovers to deny this. The recent meta in soulslikes is to make parry king, which is so not my jam at all. It’s also ironic because FromSoft themselves have moved away from the parry. In Elden Ring, they added a guarded counter that works the same as a parry (allows you to do a riposte), and is oodles easier than a parry.

I have known for some time that the FromSoft games would outpace me at some point, and I fear that we are at that point. The last boss of the last DLC of Dark Souls III pushed me to my limit. and I don’t want to even talk about Sekiro. Yes, I beat the final boss of that game, but I knew that it was at the very top of my skill ability, if not past it. I cheesed that boss by running around in circles and waiting for one particular move by the boss.

You have to know that this boss has *spoilers* four phases. The first phase is Genichiro, whom you fight earlier. Twice. Once in the very beginning when he slices off your arm (or not. You can avoid it if you’re really good. I don’t think I got a single hit on him the first time I fought him), and then once about a fourth of the way in (or later depending on what you do), there’s an epic battle on top of Ashina Castle. It’s supposed to be a hard skills check, and boy, was it ever.

In this fight, the Genechiro phase is fairly easy (in comparison to what comes next), but I realized after several attempts that if I had to use a…ah, gourd during this phase, it was better to let him kill me and try again.  I had to make it to Isshin, the Sword Saint, with all my gourds to have any chance of beating him.

As I said, I had no hope of actually beating him with my skills, so I raced around in circles in the arena, baiting out one attack. When he did that attack, I would hit him twice, and then resume running around. For three phases. Whilst having to dodge ever-increasingly difficult attacks by Isshin. If you can deflect properly, the fight can take a minute or two. Because I could not deflect, it took me fifteen minutes to beat him. And if I went back to do it again, I would lose to him another hundred times, I’m sure.


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Taiji is my way of life

I want to talk more about Taiji and how it went from something I do to something I am. Here’s yesterday’s post about my journey through Taiji. Not all of it, of course, but bits and parts of it. I want to continue on with that musing because it is such an important part of my life.

It’s funny to look back to when I first started T;iji. The second time, I mean. My brain and my body were in such disharmony. My body wanted to do the Taiji, but my brain did not. Or rather, it came up with a million reasons why it did not want to do it at the time.

I was fighting my brain every step of the way. It’s interesting to look back and remember just how much a struggle it was to practice Taiji. For the first few years, I simply could not make myself practice. I have told this story before, but there was something in my brain that refused to do it. I literally could not make myself, so I added another class a week to compensate. Then another. I waS going to classes three times a week (Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday), but not practicing at all during the day.

I had to trick myself into it. How? I told myself that I would do five minutes of stretching a day. That was it. Five minutes of stretching/warm-ups. I managed to do that and after a few months, added five more minutes. Yes, I had to treat myself like a toddler, basically, and break it up into tiny bits.

I did not reward myself for slowly adding to my practice, but I made sure to make it a habit. How? I’m not sure exactly. This is really hard for me to describe, but it’s something like this. There is a switch in my head, which is really difficult to turn on. Once I do, though, it’s on for good. There are exceptions to the rule, but for the most part, once I set a habit, I continue it.

I  really kicked it into the next gear when I started the weapons. I have no idea why I balked so much at practicing the Solo Long Form, but I did. Once I started learning weapons, then I wanted to practice. I have talked about this with my teacher, and she seemed to think it made sense. She said that I liked the weaponns, so it made sense that the weapons were what got me to practice at home.

Now, I’m up to an hour-and-fifteen minutes to an hour-and-a-half, dopending.

I have included a video of Master Liang dooing the Saber Form below. I have not seen this before, and I have to smile because he’s using a saber with tassle. Apparently, he loved doing weapons with the tassle and rarely did a weapon form without te tassle.


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The fluidity of Taiji and me

Before I start the actual post, I want to complain a bit about Word Press. The post I wrote yesterday did not get published on time, and I don’t know why. This has happened more than once, and I think it has something to do with lag. It’s Chrome. I don’t know why it’s all fucked up, but it might be time to change browsers again. I remember when it was fast and sexy. Now it’s sluggish and annoying.

Anyway. I was talking about habits, schedules, rigidity and Taiji in yesterday’s post. And neurodiversity. Taiji is really good for me because it challenges the part of my brain that gets stuck in routines.

It’s tricky because habits are good, especiallywhen you’re starting a new skill. But there’s a thin line between a healthy routine and stagnation. I can tell when I’m practicing when I’ve crossed that line. It’s a feeling in my body, and it’s hard to explain.

Taiji is alive, and ideally, you should practice while being rooted in the present. Your brain should not be thinking of what you need to do next or that fight you had with your partner last night or anything like that.

Most people have difficulty with that, including me. I have anxiety, so my brain is always scrambling all over the place. Taiji has helped with that, I must say.

My teacher has said that everyone’s minds are gaing to wander. There’s no point in castigating yourself for it. Simply note it and bring your mind back to the present.

In yesterday’s post, I mentioned that I am evenly split between needing a schedule and doing something impulsively. I like routines, but then if someone suggests doing something on the supr of the moment, I’ll be happy to do it (if it’s something that interests me).

It’s one reason I really like being friends with K. She is much more imuplsive than I am, so I have ended up doing things with her that I wouldn’t have done otherwise. For example, her brother was in a band who were performing in two days in Kansas City. Missouri, I think, not Kansas. So she, andother mutual friend, and I drove down there. Or rather, she drove and the mutual friend and I rode in the car. K loves driving, which works for me because I hate it.

We stopped at a seafood restaraunt and then got to the hotel with about an hour to spare before the concert. I flirted my ass off with the bassist and got his orange-lensed sunglasses by the end of the night. If we weren’t leaving the next morning, I would have spent the night with him, but I needed to be somewhat responsible with my time. Also, the fact that K and our mutual friend was there. It’s not nice to ditch your friends for a booty call.


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